Hello, and Happy Christmas to everybody out there. This will be the first one without my father-in-law, who made it to his 97th birthday back on December 7th (yep, D-Day) but only made it a couple days past that. He’d always said he wanted to make it to 100, but I don’t think another three years at the nursing home (where he was apparently a big hit with the staff – he always did have a good sense of humor) in the state he was in would have been happy for him (or for anybody else, really). His ashes went with my stepdaughter back to Alaska (here’s a travel tip – if you’re planning on transporting cremains, the TSA rather frowns on you doing so in a metal, bomb-shaped urn) where they were scattered off the coast and into the Pacific Ocean.

Funny how these things work. One day somebody’s here, and then, poof, they’re gone as if somebody threw a switch. Except of course they aren’t really gone. They’re presence lingers – all their stuff and their papers. Even their smells. Everything lingers and the people that are left have to figure out what to do with it all. My parents have been gone for what seems like forever at this point, and I still have their stuff. Bank records death certificates, my mother’s tchotchkes, my dad’s wallet and letters home to his mother from the war. You know, the shit that’s in all those boxes that you resolve to deal with but the best you can do is take them out one by one, look them over, and then put them back in the box for another day. My one regret (OK, well, I’ve got more than one) is that, being a dead branch on the old family tree, I don’t have anybody to pass this stuff along to.

Ah, that’s the Christmas spirit.

Anyhow, I guess I’d better get going, because there’s a dog at my feet who refuses to let me stop petting her, and it’s making it difficult to type.

So Merry Christmas and best wishes to you and yours.