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Journals

My sister in-law (SIL) passed away several years ago quite suddenly and unexpectedly (NOTE: Not by her own hands). It was pretty rough on the family. She loved her family, movies, her clients, and her students. A beautician by trade and very good one at that. she also taught at a beauty college in her city. When she would come into town, she would cut the families hair. This was a big sacrifice and very much appreciated.

My mother in-law (MIL) recently came across her daughters journals and she tossed them in the garbage, because from what she read, my SIL was very angry and unhappy with her life and where she was in this life. This whole thing sparked a few questions for me.

These are all my opinions and thoughts sparked by this situation. I’m a huge fan of journals and true stories about people.

What story?

Looking at my own life and my personal Journals, I probably write in mine when I have problems and things I want to get off my chest. If you were to read mine, you might think I am an angry or unhappy person. Just like Facebook, you won’t get a full picture of who I am or what I’m about. With Facebook, you get the good/happy things that are going on in life. Journals gives you the bad things in life or the hard ships. Photos on Facebook are probably only the good moment. Photos captured from family members and “moments” may capture how you really are or look? (You may not have time to prep? ) I wonder how you can get the complete pictures of someones life? If we could only merge all this information into one. People have many demons they are fighting and a journal is where they keep them.

Who is mentioned?

I think one of the things that people worry about when reading a journal is if they come across an entry where they mention their name? It is going to be either a good thing or a bad thing they mention about you. Do you want to read something negative written about you? I personally feel that it would be hard to read how someone truly feels about you, especially if they have negative feelings toward me. Unfortunately, there are many people in this world that have negative feelings toward me. I can try and change that, but it is the fact of life. I probably should work on that. 🙂

Unlocking the secrets.

I’ve found Journals, note books with a date and a bit of a story about what i was feeling, that go back to 1993. A few months before I would spend 25 days of my life in a hospital trying to recover from Spinal Meningitis, which is also a point where I wrote a journal of my experience. I was also given a journal in 1995 from a few friends I hung out with. It was a gift from 3 girls and most of the entries in this period of time are about how much I liked these girls, my weight, etc. Not a lot of deep dark secrets. I’ve probably mentioned things I don’t want them to ever read. I might have some secrets in there. Who knows.

What if you come across others secrets? You can’t change anything about them? It may change the way you look at them, but personally I feel like, I would still remember the good things about them. Who knows what you would find out though, it may cast a dark shadow on your memories!

The missing pieces

With all this said, I feel like having these journals with either negative or positive memories, it still gives you a look at their life. You know a little more about them and what they were thinking. I would love to find a journal my parents kept. My father was killed when I was 15 (work place accident) and my mother passed when I was 34 years old (from cancer) and I feel like I don’t know enough about them!

Several years ago, I found some old cleared checks that where my fathers. Unfortunately, having this kind of information doesn’t tell me much about him or what he spent those on, but I remember some of his habits and such, so looking at these I could infer some information. If I wanted to get crazy, I could map out a timeline of where he was? That could be interesting…..I digress…

Conclusion

I know I could go on and on about this, but it’s a very interesting question to ask yourself. Do you want to read a family members journals to find out who they were and what they were about, even if it could cloud your memories? I love looking back at my journals and reading my thoughts. I would be horrified if my wife read them, but when I’m gone it may be useful for her or my boy. Even though, for the last 8 years of his life, he is probably the one I focused on the most 🙂

How has your family grown during this time of staying home and being together?

This is a question I thought of this week while I was sitting in my office bored of work. I am an avid Facebook user and love all the things going on, where people are sharing stories and pictures about their life. It seems easier to complain about being stuck inside and how we aren’t getting along with your kids. I’m going to be the first one to admit that this is rough! It isn’t easy to home-school your kids and to be stuck inside 24/7. I’m going to ramble a bit about my answer.

Busy Life

Being able to go to work, run to the store, go play with friends, go to church are things we would do daily. We were always on the go. I enjoyed going out on the weekends to visit Home Depot when I was bored. For the first time ever, I went 5 days without leaving my house. (I did go to the mailbox), and it was crazy for me. I was fine with it after a few days.

Planning

Our little family seems to be getting along so much better. We have learned how to better plan our meals, so we don’t have to go to the store for two weeks. We still forget stuff or need a thing or two, but we’ve tried to work around those things.

Space

We have learned how to appreciate each others space too. The boy seems to enjoy playing with LEGOs by himself for hours. I go and check on him and play with him from time to time, but he tends to push me away. “What are you doing here?” hmm. Rejection. 🙂 He doesn’t want me to interrupt his 3-4 projects he has going on at once. 🙂

I have been listening to books and I’ve found myself taking some personal time to listen to these books. It has been great and addicting! My wife loves her games and she gets a lot of time in when we are sleeping 🙂 *read: NIGHT OWL*

Family Time

I am failing as a parent, my boy had never played “go fish” until last week and we started playing it at night before bed time and he loves it. We are playing more games together. My wife and I had fun playing a few games, that I kept messing up! There is one game we are still working on though. My boy loves Roblox and that seems to bring more contention into his life than enjoyment. It’s rough to get him off, but we are working on it. If he isn’t playing a hard challenging game, then he does alright.

Church

Church time spent on our home is getting easier and we are trying to have more lessons and singing, even though it’s not very good. The boy has the attention span of a good fish, but that is getting better. It is always a fight to get him to come down and even get dressed.

Find the good

We aren’t perfect and we are trying to make the best of this situation where we are stuck inside the house together. Who knows when this is going to let up? I hope we won’t be stuck inside all summer long! The economy has to bounce back, or we are all going to be in trouble.

Please take a step back and look at the positive things in your life.

Christmas Month

I am going to do another blog post this week.

Having the holidays over is going to be awesome! There are a lot of festive activities and parties, but it is one right after another! The weekends are usually crammed packed, so you don’t have much down time. Sunday after church are usually my favorite times. We are chilled around here and take it easy.

I have loved every event that we have attended and done this month. Earlier this month, we attended a Christmas Party with my family. Getting together with this side of the family, usually only happens once a year. My family means the world to me and I wish that I saw them more! As I’ve mentioned, my father passed away several years ago (30 years now). We have since found out that he had a daughter before he got married to my mom. It is a crazy DNA story that I will have to expound on sometime. She fits right in with our family. There are a lot of resemblances with her and my family that are spooky. Each get together, we learn more and more about her. So much fun!

This weekend, we were able to meet with Jacob’s birth grandma, J. She lives in North Carolina, so we don’t get to see her very much. She is divorced and has two adult kids that keep her busy! Jacob’s birthmother has made some decisions in her life that aren’t the best. It’s rough to see her go through this troubled time. We have so much love for her and the decision she made to place with us. We just don’t love her decisions she is making now.

We told Grandma J to meet us at Leatherby’s, so we could have food and desert, if she had eaten, since it was going to be late. We show up and see a sign that says, “We are temporarily closed for remodeling….” There was no mention of this online. I look it up now and it still says it’s open! Am I the only one who relies way too much on the internet to tell me what is going on? We ended up going a block or two over to “Crown Burger”. You can’t go wrong with burgers, can you? We had a great visit with J.

Before the meeting with J, we had family photos taken. I was dreading it, but it wasn’t as bad as I though it was going to be. I’m not much of a suit person, but it went better than I thought.

We went through the Christmas In Color display this week in South Jordan, UT. It is a big parking lot filled with Christmas lights synced to music and it is amazing! It is a pretty fun thing to do as a family. Jacob enjoys it. Hopefully the biggest of scrooges can come through with a little Christmas spirit or a song or two stuck in your head. This year, they added vertical lights have this 3D effect to them.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas this year. I hope you don’t get caught up in the whole retail nightmare of Christmas.

Memories…

Here is a picture of my mom and dad. My father is smoking in the aunts house. Seems crazy now, but we never thought about it back then.

This week my boy wanted to listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas Song. It made me think of my Aunt Margret, who passed away last year. It brought back a lot of memories that I cherish. Memories of hanging out at her house, her laugh, and the many fun things we did with her. When I was a boy, I would hang out at her house a lot. I first heard this song at her house many moons ago. If I could only call her up and tell her how much my boy loves this song, and the memories I have of this song.

While driving to work, I was thinking about the people in my life that try and avoid memories or places that bring up memories about certain people. I’m curious why? My father passed away when I was 15 years old (about 44 days before my 16th birthday). I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a traumatic experience and there was a lot of anger towards his job where he was killed. He died in a work place accident, but of course, I had to hold someone responsible. I wasn’t happy with the place he worked for many years.

My father was a smoker and he smoked in our house (this was the 80’s, it was acceptable…right?). To this day, if someone is smoking around me, it still brings up memories about my father. I hate the smell of smoke, but I cherish those memories of him. A few memories are: Long drives down by the lake to on his way to have coffee with his friends. Sitting in the bowling alley, impatiently waiting while he talked, and talked with his friends. I was an impatient kid. 🙂

My mother has also passed on, from Cancer (as mentioned before), and I’d say there isn’t a day that doesn’t go by where I think of her. The memories are awesome, and I will be sad when they are gone.

All of my grandparents have passed on. My father-in-law has passed. It is so crazy! I’m a bit jealous of my friends that have both sets of parents an grandparents!

One thing I love about Facebook is the memories. We live in a society now where “dropping by” to visit someone is a bad thing. That is one thing my mother and father would do a lot. “Hey lets go see …..”, and we would drive over to their house. No cell phones, and calling their home phone took too long! It was great, but now you don’t see anyone unless you are on Facebook or make prior arrangements.

People tend to only post the “good” things that are happening in their life, but I don’t mind it. I still get to keep up with them. It is hard to tell if they are going through a rough time. If you have a friend who has passed on and they have a Facebook account, it is a bit of a memorial. You have a place to leave memories and photos from the past. There are many times I’ve gone to my parents grave site and spoke to them as if they were there listening to me. If my parents had a Facebook account, I’d probably write a message or two to them. We do have a group where we can post photos of them and share memories.

I asked my wife about this why people try and avoid the memories, and her response was that they may be avoiding the places where they died or the memories about them dying. I can totally understand this. The memories of their death are probably the most traumatic. The experience was tough, but I know that I grew so much from going through my experiences. It was definitely rough, but it is a memory and something I’m never going to forget.

What are your thoughts?