A lot of things are rattling around in my head right now. Typing is painful because of a small cut on the tip of my right ring finger. Sliced it on the edge of my portable dishwasher a couple nights ago.

I haven't journaled or so much as glanced at my deviantart page for months. I've worked on several projects, most of it screen printing stuff or colored pencil work, doing celtic crosses, or commissions for this, that and the other thing. A great weight keeps me down emotionally... well, several great weights. God helps me bear it, but I am reluctant to let go of all of it, like I know I should. Why human beings feel it necessary to endure great emotional pain when we have other options is beyond me. It's like I'm addicted to grief, sadness, and self pity. They sap my energy and make me useless to other people.

Why so sad? A lot has happened in the last year. I've lost three close family members. My grandpa died late last year. He was in his mid 70's, and God knows he's better off. He'd been wheel-chair bound for most of his life and been getting sicker and sicker with multiple strokes and infections. One last major stroke finished him off. I imagine he woke up afterward, in heaven, breathing through new nostrils and walking on new legs, a great sigh a relief after waking from a terrible nightmare, but as nightmares go, he soon can't remember what it was about.

Next, amid a great torrent of financial hardship for my family and I, and a great amount of back and forth bantering between my father and I about how his wife is going to either drive him to the nuthouse or suicide-by-not-doing-chemo, I finally was able to have a heart-to-heart dialogue with him about all the pent up feelings and resentments I had about my childhood, his absence in it, and his inability to stay married to one person for more than a few years. He was ranting about silly stuff, and I know that the tension between them was due to his cancer and my step-mom was having a hard time watching her husband waste away, and he was having a hard time seeing her fall apart from it and unintentionally taking it out on him. I was terrified that after sharing all of that, and me basically calling him a childish coward, that he would never want to speak to me again. He did though, and while he didn't totally own up to his part in it all, we did have a closer bond and he and my step-mom did reconcile their differences. Not long after, though, a mersa infection in his leg began working its way through his immune-deficient body, and after a long fight he finally succumed to the infection and died this past September. I was with him at his final moment, and though he was in a coma he opened his eyes and looked straight into my own as he breathed his last. I told him it was okay to let go. I wasn't going to make him stay anymore, and he was gone. I had a dream a short time after that, and he was sitting with me at a booth in a Wendy's restaurant. He was well and healthy again, with his black baseball cap, salt and pepper beard, and Harley Davidson t-shirt. He looked like he did before he got the cancer. I exclaimed "Dad! You're back!" and he said, "Son, I never left." I said, "But Dad, you died," and he said to me "Yes, but I'm still here, and always will be." He said he was in heaven with grandpa and Jesus, but he was here too and can see us and everything we do. He never got to meet his grandaughter before he died. She was in the very next room when we came to him in the hospital, but he was in ICU and Sera couldn't come in.

We got back home from Eastern Washington after my Dad's memorial. He was cremated and I read a few bible verses. It was good. I'll post the memorial program I made for him. I was bracing myself, though, because my Aunt had been battling brain cancer for the better part of the year, and she was losing. It wasn't more than a couple weeks, and she passed on herself. Another memorial, and I was feeling utterly deflated. Too much death for one year.

Well, no one else has died. I'm hopeful for a new year with new beginnings. We filed for bankruptcy to get rid of our overwhelming medical debt. Amy lost her job so we had no way to pay those and our car loan and all the credit card bills. We're stable now, the house is a mess, and my work is in jeopardy because of the Howard Hanson Dam in Kent, WA threatening to bust and flood the entire valley. BECU is right in the middle of the flood zone. We've made precautions, I'm to work from home if the office gets flooded, but it's still a scary prospect.

Faith has been something that has never come easy to me. When God took me in, he got an orphan with some trust issues. We're working on it together, He and I, and we'll get it figured out, some day. I'm so glad I have such a patient God, and a patient wife. I can tell you from experience, because I have a son who is just like me in so many regards, I don't think I would have the patience to deal with me if I had to.

Here's to better tomorrows and productive todays.

Love to all,

Jeremy