I’m sorry for being gone so long, it’s just that I have had a new set of demons find me and I’m wrestling with them – just in time for Christmas.

I’m afraid what I write might not be coherent and the whole reason for this blog is to allow me a chance to articulate my thoughts, emotions, and memories.

I’m afraid to write.  I’m afraid of what will come out.

So I’m trying.  Again.

My Mom’s passing has triggered a spectrum of new processes – from the deep grieving that has me crying at commercials, to the highs of finally starting college and working on things I haven’t had the energy in the past.

The holidays become a hard time for everyone even if you haven’t had to deal with a loss of a loved one.  It’s hard because there are so many expectations of what you’re supposed to do.  I’m not finding my Christmas Spirit this year, yet I have three amazing children keeping my attention to just try.

I’m rambling.  Maybe this is my attempt to not write what I want to say.  What I should say.  My hands are in my pockets, I’m not looking up, just scuffing my feet across the ground trying not to be awkward.

Damn those scars run deep.

In my life, I’ve learned to guide my emotions to look at the better side of things.  To always see the silver lining and while a lot of things hurt, it will be better tomorrow.  Just live through the pain, work on it, but don’t let it take over.

My life isn’t a horrible story like some people.  My life has also never been the fairy tale I might make it sound like.

I grew up in a racially violent area where I was singled out for many reasons, and I was beat up or picked on every day of my childhood.  Only to come home where my Mom may be home or not because she was the only income and worked when she could.  If she was home, she was tired and didn’t necessarily have time to check on me.  I watched my family fall apart after my grandparent’s divorce, which also revealed a monster, I won’t speak to that.  Later, my Step Dad would not be equipped to have a young boy in his life and I found myself without that emotional connection.

He further avoided me after he accidentally shot my mother in a hunting accident.  Later, I left to go into the Navy and he left my Sister to take care of our Mom.  Years later we would find out he decided to leave this world.

Lots of partying and failed relationships, eventually I found someone that had a unique strength and I tried to fail in that relationship.  She never let me.  I never knew unconditional love, still not sure I get it completely, but the Wife Unit is tenacious and trying to teach me.

Throughout the whole time, so many hospital stays, so many decisions, so many “not going to make it”.  Then there was doing personal cares for my mother.  Things a child should never have to do for their own parent, much less a Son and his Mother.

I’m sorry this hasn’t been an uplifting message today.  Not yet.

Then there was the flood.  We’re still rebuilding.

Then there was Mom getting sick this year.  If this life were a movie, I think this past 12 months would be the climax.  This is the deepest of the scars.  We asked them to turn the machines off.  She suddenly opened her eyes and looked right at me, with fear and panic.  I held her the moment she took her last breath.

She was a fighter.  I couldn’t help her fight anymore.

I wasn’t strong enough to keep fighting with her.

Now that you’ve read all that, are you ready for what she built me for?  I have a purpose that keeps me getting up every morning.

Throughout all of this life, I have found solace in the idea that today is only a page in my book.  That chapters come and go, and eventually the hero of the story is going to get past the challenges.

I keep trying.  No matter how much I get emotionally thrown to the ground, I keep trying.  Cliché right?

I could wallow in my story.  I even feel validated if that were going to be my choice.  But it’s not my choice, I choose hope.

The hope that I can help someone else.  The hope that there is a greater man inside of me, that one day I will meet him myself.  People have tried telling me he’s there.

So I cry.  At songs.  At commercials.  At movies.  At random moments.

And I wipe away the tears.

And I try, again.

I try.