So many threads, so many thoughts turning toward the holidays have me thinking......
I'll be making something extra special for the adults in our family this year. In the past, gifts for the adults always range from something really fun, to baskets full of homemade goods, to fancy.
This year, I'm giving a book of sorts. You see, when FIL was dying 2 years ago, I spent nearly every moment with him. I took the kids to school, then went to the nursing home until lunch time or so. Then, I'd go back after dinner and stay until bedtime. We had a lot of hours alone together and we talked about everything from his childhood being raised by his mother and grandfather after his own father died in a freak accident (fell out of a hay loft), to his disappointment and heartache over the oldest son who'd turned his back on the family for the new wife.
I wrote it all down in the moments when he was sleeping and I couldn't bring myself to leave his side. I always carried a notebook with me to write down his stats when I'd take him to a doctor appointment. That notebook became "The Arnold Diary".
I remember thinking the night he passed away that I needed just five more minutes, just one more story for the diary; it wasn't finished yet.
I've started transcribing the diary and will print it off to give to his widow, their daughter and son (my husband). It's particularly important that this is done this Christmas because his widow has been diagnosed (again) with lung cancer and will not see another Christmas. His children and their mother need a little reminder of how important they all were to him.
Will any of you be gifting something extra special this year, too?
I'll be making something extra special for the adults in our family this year. In the past, gifts for the adults always range from something really fun, to baskets full of homemade goods, to fancy.
This year, I'm giving a book of sorts. You see, when FIL was dying 2 years ago, I spent nearly every moment with him. I took the kids to school, then went to the nursing home until lunch time or so. Then, I'd go back after dinner and stay until bedtime. We had a lot of hours alone together and we talked about everything from his childhood being raised by his mother and grandfather after his own father died in a freak accident (fell out of a hay loft), to his disappointment and heartache over the oldest son who'd turned his back on the family for the new wife.
I wrote it all down in the moments when he was sleeping and I couldn't bring myself to leave his side. I always carried a notebook with me to write down his stats when I'd take him to a doctor appointment. That notebook became "The Arnold Diary".
I remember thinking the night he passed away that I needed just five more minutes, just one more story for the diary; it wasn't finished yet.
I've started transcribing the diary and will print it off to give to his widow, their daughter and son (my husband). It's particularly important that this is done this Christmas because his widow has been diagnosed (again) with lung cancer and will not see another Christmas. His children and their mother need a little reminder of how important they all were to him.
Will any of you be gifting something extra special this year, too?