Merry Fucking Christmas

Three years ago today my brother-in-law Sarge died from cancer. Three years ago tomorrow my nephew Jonathan died of a heroin overdose.

Those two deaths will always be linked together with Christmas.

Period. No way around it.

Those two days and the resulting aftermath are permanently burned into my mind, my heart, my soul.

Cori called us early in the morning to tell us about Sarge. Carol and I crawled back into bed, cried, and talked about her amazing brother.

The very next morning, early, my brother called to tell us about Jonathan. He actually apologized to me. I will never forget that. He knew about Sarge and he said something like "I'm sorry to tell you this after hearing about Carol's brother but......". He lost his only son, his only child, to that fucking drug and he still took the time to worry about my emotions.

We crawled back into bed, cried, and talked about Jonathan, the nephew I never really got to know, to my eternal regret.

I was driving to work last Saturday, December 9, listening to The Beatles station on Sirius. They were discussing John Lennon's assassination with the last person to ever interview him. This guy spent 3 or 4 hours in the Dakota interviewing John and Yoko on the day John was killed. After the interview John asked the guy if he would drop him and Yoko off at the recording studio, which he did.

John was shot to death by fucking Chapman after leaving the studio that night.

The worst part of that deal was that John had just come out of a 5 year hiatus. He dropped out of the music business to spend time with his son Sean. He and Yoko ended up putting together an album called Double Fantasy, released 3 weeks before he was killed.

The music was so positive, so uplifting, so full of love and happiness. Lennon was at a very good place in his life and in his head. And then he was dead.

My emotions about John come and go at this time of year. Sometimes I give it a little thought; sometimes I give it a lot of thought.

Last Saturday the emotions came flooding back and became interconnected with Sarge's death, Jonathan's death, Carol's brutal battle with cancer, and the problems my two precious sons, Keith and Craig, are dealing with.

It all got wrapped up with a pretty bow in my mind relative to fucking Christmas bullshit.

I never really liked the holiday. It is so fucking phony and creates so much stress. It is a holiday that tries to manufacture emotion and do it at the expense of already empty wallets.

When I watch TV and endure endless commercials hawking products and trying to make it look like all is happiness and light, I want to fucking puke. I want to choke the life out of the people who create these commercials; I want to destroy the people who schedule them to play every 15 seconds.

It is relentless, it is mindless, it is soul sucking and offensive.

My wife Carol has endured the worst year of her life. A mastectomy on Labor Day weekend, a tumor removed from her brain on 11/02, from which she is still recovering. Her speech is off, she is limited to what she can eat because chewing is not easy, she gets exhausted easily. Her body has been under assault for four months.

I don't give a fuck about Christmas. Except for the fact that I will get to spend the day with Carol, my sons and my brother. That's what it is all about.

It is not about fucking presents and fucking phony "Merry Christmas" rolling mindlessly off everyone's fucking tongue.

You know what my best present would be? To have my wife back. Healthy and happy.

And if I feel this strongly about it, imagine how Carol feels about it.

I think of Christmas as a second Thanksgiving. That's how we approach it. Thanksgiving was magnificent; just the four of us sitting around the dinner table talking, laughing and reminiscing.

Christmas will bring the added bonus of having my brother Ed here. Carol did not want Eddie here on Thanksgiving because he has a new woman and Carol was not comfortable meeting her considering the way Carol looks and the way she talks.

But Carol being Carol, the amazingly strong person that she is, she realizes that she will have to deal with this bullshit for a while, so she decided she would rather have Eddie here and deal with meeting his woman.

We are looking forward to 2018. We are focused on that and only that. We want a new year. A good year. We deserve it.

Carol will not be completely healed by January but at least we can put this fucking year behind us.

Meanwhile, for the rest of 2017, I will be loving my wife. Thinking about her. Protecting her. I will be thinking about John Lennon. Sarge. Jonathan. Keith. Craig.

Instead of putting out phony emotions I will be thinking about the things that matter in life. The things you can lose.

In a fucking heartbeat.

You want the tinsel and the bullshit, you go right ahead. Go for it.

I will be focused on the people I love and how they make my life worth living.

And to you I say:

Merry Fucking Christmas.