Merry Christmas (and Merry After-Christmas)

Hello and Merry After-Christmas! I've been having a hard time getting past my last blog entry, my Brizzy-goodbye ... I think I just started to believe I didn't have anything worthwhile or interesting to say anymore. But I feel a little guilty and need to move on (obviously), so I'm joining the ranks and will add some holiday thoughts and pictures.

As I do every Christmas, I went to St. George to be with my mom ...

and my brother, Scott:
For years the tradition has been: "You are the Single Ones ... come home for Christmas!" And I've loved spending the holiday with my mom, dad and brother (I can't believe this was already our second Christmas without Dad). This year I felt really, really guilty for leaving Ruth behind in light of the loss of sweet Brizzy ... I felt like a good sister and friend should not leave her to spend Christmas alone (Ruth wasn't given time off from work, so she couldn't go anywhere). But as time went on it felt so important to go home and be with Mom and Scott; I just had to do it. Ruth understood. I don't think it was easy for her and Cowboy to be alone, though. I told her, "NEXT YEAR your job had BETTER let you off and you WILL go somewhere with your sister and I will stay home with the woof(s), if need be." But probably we'll try kenneling the woof(s) for at least a couple of days so we can both leave for the holiday.

So ... I left last Sunday and MISSED all the SNOW (yayyyy!) and instead, got lots of this (a nice rainy view from my mom's backyard):

A little of this (sorry, the picture's not the best -- can you tell I was driving?! shame on me):

And I came home to this (the view from our office parking lot in Provo):

"Sigh." My little California heart cried ... I don't think I will ever, ever, EVER get used to the snow. It's beautiful -- it's fun -- it's ... (let's see, I should be able to think of more positive descriptions, surely) ... it's scary and wet and cold and messy. Oh well!

It was such a sweet, peaceful week for me. This has been a very harrowing year ... one of those extremely painful ones you grow from astronomically but NEVER want to repeat more than once in a decade. So I am grateful for the quiet, the good spirit, the non-busying days that marked this Christmas experience. We ate out a lot (hah! Nance & Sue, I never thought I'd see it but Mom was actually tired of going out after several days! hahahahahaha!) and we watched some videos: "October Sky" (GREAT MOVIE!!!!), "The Polar Express," "Prophets and Presidents," "Hinckley: a Giant Among Men," "The Legend of Johnny Lingo" ... and read books, took naps and yakked & yakked & yakked. (I've often wondered if other families sit around and talk as much as ours does whenever we get together - hah.) We even tried to watch "The Polar Express" a-la-3D ...

But we didn't last more than five minutes -- HAHAHAHAHA! We needed a giant-screen TV I think. We end up watching it "normal" and enjoyed it very much. But the glasses are cool, don't you think? (hehe)

And of course on Christmas Eve we caught one of the best parts of "It's a Wonderful Life" - the last 25 minutes. Is there anyone who doesn't love that ending? Is there anyone who doesn't cry, no matter how many hundreds of times they've seen it? That's gotta be one of the best feel-good movies of all time (thank you, Frank Capra!). I was unfortunate enough to come down with a "small flu" on Christmas Day ... fortunately it wasn't severe enough to ruin the holiday - just strong enough to keep me from wanting to eat much for a day or two (a mixed blessing).

One thing that meant a great deal to us this year: during Christmas Eve we read the Christmas story, which brought the Savior into our thoughts and hearts, and then afterwards Mom read one of Dad's journal entries from a Christmas in our past (in the '80s ... 1987?) and a couple of Christmas-past journal entries of her own. I didn't know this, but Mom has written a journal synopsis of every Christmas ... I think from the beginning of our family! Christmas, and Thanksgiving too. What a surprise - I had no idea. It was touching and uplifting to hear about Christmases in their own words. I keep being reminded of how important it is to write of our experiences. SO important! What we see, what we do, what we feel, in our own words ... priceless.

You know, the gifts were fun and the candy plentiful (oh dear):

but it's the connections that mattered most ... being with my mom and brother, having each of my other brothers and sisters call in (and some of "the grandkids"), hearing that my nephew, Jared & Camilla are pregnant (YAYYY!), talking with Ruth, thinking about my friends (though dear friends, I sorely neglected you this year - I should have called and/or e-mailed, and I didn't, though I thought about it every single day), and pondering my relationship with my Heavenly parents and my Savior ... this is what Christmas was really all about, to me.

My wish is that you had a special, joyful Christmas too, and I hope you felt the love of the Savior and a love FOR the Savior that will propel you into kind acts and good patterns in the coming year now stretched out before us. CHEERS!!

Brizzy's Rainbow Day

It is with great sadness and a broken heart that I have to write what I never wanted to write ... that yesterday we sent our sweet Brizzy over the Rainbow Bridge. His spirit was strong but his body was too weak, and the cancer won. But it didn't win out quickly! It was a fight to the finish, not just by us but by this magnificent, gentle, strong-willed woof. I have learned some powerful lessons from him about strength and the will to keep going, and about loving others so much that you want to stay with them despite pain and difficulties and a body that can't cooperate like it used to.

Sometimes we are lucky to be blessed with special individuals who come into our life and touch us in ways we never thought possible. Brizzy has enriched me in just such a way. He taught me deep lessons about unconditional love and how to really enjoy the quiet, peaceful moments in life. He taught me how to sacrifice for another being and to give up my own wants for the wants of another. He gave Ruth the most sacred gift of all: what it feels like to be a mother. She who is a wonderful soul and who has longed for a family, but who hasn't had the privilege of being married and bearing children (yet), had this wonderful dog to fill the gap. Even though he was a dog and not a human child, Ruth loved him and cared for him as if he were her child. They had a very special bond, those two, and it was a privilege to be a part of it in my small way. Mostly I was the sister and the "alternate mom," which is a pretty good role for someone as independent as I.

Brizzy shared with me the gift of living in the moment and boy did he have a thing or two to teach me about enjoying FOOD! (Not that I needed that lesson - hah.) And best of all, I who have no children either was gifted with the opportunity to love and sacrifice for another living being, and to give up my own selfish wants for the wants of another.

Ruth and I will be okay. Though our hearts are hurting and we will miss him desperately, we are being blanketed in a warm cocoon of love and support from you: our family and friends and ward family, and it is seeing us through. The Lord promised Ruth in a blessing that the Comforter would come ... and He has. But what I never expected is that He would come through feelings of peace but ALSO through the service of all of you. We are both overwhelmed by it.

I am so glad that Brizzy enjoyed what he could right up to the end: Wednesday night he ate two hamburgers PLUS his regular dish of dog food, and Thursday morning he had an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's Peach Ice Cream (he ate EVERY BIT OF IT with gusto) PLUS he ate almost a full bowl of dog food, and on his way to the vet's office he ate a ton of peanut butter. In fact, his final acts were to let us pet him and cry over him and look at us both with big, I love-you eyes, and THEN try to finish off as much of the peanut butter as we would allow him. He ate half the bottle before Dr. Edmonds told us we'd better stop (it could have come back up when all his organs relaxed - euww). So when he crossed that rainbow bridge, it was with his very favorite taste in the whole wide world on his lips -- peanut butter.

I would like to add a quote and a poem I found which I really liked:

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace." ~Milan Kundera~

THE CREATION

When God had made the earth and sky
the flowers and the trees,
He then made all the animals
the fish, the birds and bees.

And when at last He'd finished
not one was quite the same.
He said, "I'll walk this world of mine
and give each one a name."

And so He traveled far and wide
and everywhere He went,
a little creature followed Him
until its strength was spent.

When all were named upon the earth
and in the sky and sea,
the little creature said, "Dear Lord,
there's not one left for me."

Kindly the Father said to him,
"I've left you to the end.
I've turned my own name back to front
and called you dog, My friend."
~Author Unknown~

Goodbye Sweet Brizzy -- I am so grateful for the knowledge I possess which teaches me that there IS a Spirit World and I will see you again. Run free -- Run fast -- and eat joyfully!