Dealing With the Loss of Someone Close to You During the Holiday's

Like many of you out there, we are all getting ready to deal with holiday's. I am sure like most you are generally looking forward to it. Gifts, family, friends and good times that you will remember for years to come. The holiday's to me are also a time to reflect. I recently lost my father and he and I were not really "close" until about five years before his death.

I grew to respect him greatly for many of the things that he thought me and only gained that respect after going out and living my life for awhile. Unfortunately like many things, you take your parents for granted and he never pre-judged me for all the stupid things that I did that seemed like good ideas at the time. He always was there for me and even after I moved out, and back in several times, he always opened his home to me.

When he was diagnosed with cancer, it came as no big shock to as he was a smoker for as long as I could remember. What I was not prepared for was how quick he deteriorated or how well he dealt with it until the end. He became the shell of the man that I knew and still to this day and probably forever, I will never get over that. This is a man that came from a very poor household and was living on his own at a young age. His parents were not exactly role models but yet he figured it out.

That is one reason I do not buy completely into that you are a product of your environment although partially it is to blame. There are plenty of people that come form privileged backgrounds that are bad people. You got to want to be a better person. Your upbringing or family traits are only part of you. Mostly you have to find it deep down within you to be a good person.

I think about him a lot and more now that another Christmas season is upon us. He missed the birth of both of my children and my youngest looks a lot like him. My wife and I had only started dating when he got bad and she only met him a few times but he knew that I would marry her. He really liked her which I cannot say for many of my girlfriend's that I had over the years. He would never say so, but I could tell.

I have learned not to dwell on the negatives such as why God took away a man as good as him at such a young age or how he had just retired and only got one Social Security check before his passing after contributing his blood, sweat and tears for forty years only to get a lame check sent to my mother for 500 bucks or something and there are tens of thousands of deadbeats out there living the high life on the "government" dime.

I think now about how he looks down upon me and my family everyday and smiles about how his oldest son has become a man. He sees me taking care of his family and knowing that he did a good job with me. He looks down at his two grandkids and laughs as my daughter shoves 87 potato chips in her mouth at once and how my son is going to carry on the family name. He sees me watching old war movies like he did, yelling at the TV because the New York Yankees are losing like he did and being the best father I can be, which he did.

Good things...that is how you cope. If you don't, you will drive yourself mad. If are reading this and recently lost someone that you were close to, I know what you are going through. It will get better, believe me. Take it one day at a time and remember the good things about that person. Remember the great times you had together or something that they said to you one Wednesday afternoon in the past that made you feel like a million bucks. That is what one day you will get to...I promise.