On bad news and good news -- reposted

  
Good News Follows Bad (Originally posted 12/26/2008 on another blog)


 I guess its just the way of the world. I was hell-bent to have a nice Christmas and was pretty well inundated with bad news for most of December. We are close to people who suffered family deaths and we all experienced a lot of sadness. Then, as we approached Christmas, we learned of the engagement of our dear friend Oksana and much of the gloom was lifted.

Oksana spends Christmas with us almost every year and I consider her to be part of the family. She and my daughter are almost like sisters so that makes her almost like a daughter. We were able to worm most of the happy story out of her over the course of the Christmas holiday and we were even able to meet the lucky fiance through a video link to his family home in Italy. Damiano is a very nice young man and they both are very excited.
The wedding will be at least a year off and there is a lot that Oksana has to stay focused on in her job search but this was great news that made our Christmas even more special than we expected.


Loss and Sweet Memories (originally posted 12/12/2008 on another blog)

This is tough. The youngest son of some dear friends has died. Joe was a young man just starting out in the world at age 29. It was a joy watching him grow up from a little kid and seeing him grow into a young man with such potential. He was blessed in many ways...but first by the gift of wonderful parents and an older brother.


Joe was a unique person that followed his own path and found what he wanted to find. He seemed to find joy from life and the challenges that he encountered. He had the capacity to share some of that joy with people around him. Joe's was the second death that happened to friend's families this month. Another friend's grandmother died early in December. She was more of a mother than a grandmother to him and had a very stabilizing influence in the family. Both of these deaths were unexpected and quite sudden. While the death of someone in her late 80s is difficult, it is not outside the realm of what we might expect. The sudden death of a 29 year old is something that shouldn't be happening and we are at a loss and it seems like the rules of life are broken.

Life is short. No one promised us that we would have a long life or an easy life. Take time to express your feelings and your love for people and reflect on the many blessings and contributions that people make to your life while they are here...and while you are here. I think we express this through our actions, most of the time, but it would be better to actually tell them how much they mean to us while we have the chance.