When I was a rural mail carrier, the time after Christmas until spring was—I don’t want to say depressing—but just not my favorite time. Believe it or not, the busy, long hours leading up to Christmas were at least interspersed with festivity and Holiday cheer. Then, the cold, short, sometime bleak days of winter set in.
Mom’s sudden turn for the worse leading to losing her has been similar to those previous days leading up to the Holidays. Grief is work but it was interspersed with the joys that come with family and friends coming together to celebrate Mom’s loving and good life and Christmas.
Christmas is over and it’s back to routine. I felt a tug of that old cold, bleak winter feeling this morning when the sky was gray and the temperature cold. As I sadly began to put away the old photos I had dug out of Mom and her life, I began to think perhaps I should start on some small scale to organize those photos. Possibly first by decade and Christmas celebrations. Also, finish scanning the rest of the old negatives where I happened upon this picture of Mom, Dad, and a friend that none of the family had seen before.

Or, I could finish the photo book of the last decade I started making as a Christmas present for each of our children and their families before I had to quit.
There’s the empty file cabinet that I’m going to put 50 file folders in, one for each state with a map and points of interest cut from magazines that need to be gone through and then tossed.
I filled in birthdays on my 2011 calendar. For some reason, that simple act always makes me happy.
At any rate, it is still a cold winter day, but the sun has come out, streaming in our south windows. The house is toasty warm and so is my outlook. Mom’s spirit is with me as is Dad’s and all those close to me who have moved on from this life. As the cards say, memories do comfort. And, those memories are created over a lifetime. I’m excited to continue making mine.