December 26, 1959

December 26 always is a difficult day for me. Not because Christmas is over--we still have a week of holiday time, after all. No, it's because that's the date when my father died in 1959. So this marks the 60th anniversary of that live-changing day, one that has hung over my holidays all these years. He was only 44 years old, I 14; we had not even reached an age where we could have an adult father-son talk. It was worse for my brother, then only 12, who was very close to Dad, not so much to Mom. Ironically, Dad's own father had died only six days earlier, though we never told him that they were in different hospitals at the same time. My poor Grandmother shuttled between them, not able to share her double-grief with either, and then sat stoically through the funerals of her husband and only son in successive weeks. In the end, we all survived, my brother and I turned out fine, and life went on. But I never can fully enjoy the Holiday Season, even this sixty years later.