Here it is December 21, four days before Christmas, and I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster this week. I'm happy one minute, sad one minute, feel pretty good at times, and at other times all I want to do is curl up in the bed and be a bum. I haven't felt this way, I don't think, during this entire cancer journey. I'm not convinced that it has a thing to do with the cancer, though. If it does, it's only because I'm still feeling a few effects of the 7th treatment. But I know that will pass, and in another day or two I'll feel great!! These feelings are not because I'm so busy rushing around trying to finish up my Christmas shopping, like previous years. The shopping is done, and the presents are wrapped (except for one or two stragglers). Maybe I can blame it on the weather outside-- it's dreary, and is expected to be dreary for the next five or six days.
I know part of my feelings are because I have friends and family who are hurting this week and next. Holidays can and should be such a wonderful time of year; but so many times there's sadness etched right in the middle of those times. We don't know from one year to the next--actually one day to the next--what the future holds for us. We can lose a loved one literally in the blink of an eye. Two years ago today, our nephew, Robbie Cushing, who was 28 and seemingly on top of the world with a new job in South Florida, passed away after a massive stroke/blood clot to his brain. This was less than 10 months after his sister, Lindsey, 24, lost her battle with kidney cancer. My sister's daughter, Sheila, passed away on January 1, 1993 after a nearly five-year battle with leukemia, and I well remember how hard that Christmas season was for the family.
So while we're celebrating this week and enjoying festive times with friends and family, we need to remember all those around us who may be hurting -- for whatever reason.
Changing topics slightly, I was thinking this morning (as I was lollygagging in bed) about the inate goodness of most people -- especially around this time of year but how that perception can be so skewed by what we read and hear sometimes. Most of you don't know this, (and I really hate to admit it) but I like to listen to the Paul Finebaum Radio Show in the afternoons when I'm in my car going places. He's a local sports talk show host who's gone national, and is somewho who loves to stir the pot -- especially between Auburn and Alabama fans. He has regular callers who call his show on an almost daily basis, and they are, in some cases, total crackpots, idiots, whatever you want to call them, some Alabama fans, some Auburn fans, who definitely spew hate against the opposing fanbases. Thankfully the idiot callers are limited to just a few on each side. But the perception is that opposing fans of the schools hate each other with a vengenance.
If you've ever gotten on al.com and read the sports forums, i.e., the ones for the Tide and the Tigers, then you see that same attitude, only worse, ad naseaum. Anonymous posters making fun of the other team, the coach, accusing their rival of incessant cheating, on and on and on. If you believed everything you read and heard, you'd think this state was suddenly shot back through time to the Civil War Days and we crazy Alabamians were duking it out on the battlefield.
But then things happen in real life that let me know that that's not true. There are so many good people here in this state.
After our idiot "fan", Harvey Updyke, poisened the Toomer's Trees in Auburn last January, almost immediately a group of Alabama fans set up a FB site called "Tuscaloosa for Toomers" and raised money to help save the oak trees in Auburn. Then after the terrible tornados of April 27, which devastated Tuscaloosa along with so many other areas in the state, a group of Auburn fans got together and started a FB page called "Toomer's for Tuscaloosa." They immediately went to work raising money, collecting donations, and organizing volunteers to help with the needs in Tuscaloosa. I follow them on FB, and to this day they are still raising money, collecting toys for kids who were affected all over the state from the tornados and helping people rebuild houses -- this is eight months after the tornado!! The people of Alabama truly do love each other, whether we're Auburn or Alabama fans, whether we bleed crimson or orange!! We need to all remember that and not let the cowardly, anonymous actions of a few idiots on a radio show or an internet forum cloud our opinions.
I've heard several examples lately of people anonymously doing good deeds for others -- people they don't know. If 2011 has taught us anything, it should be that we are all in this journey of life together. We can choose to do good, or we can choose to live in our little shells and not reach out to others. I need to get out there and do some good deeds this week. After all, there's nothing that makes you feel better, and gets you out of the doldrums more, than doing good deeds for others.
Hope you all have a great Christmas with your family and friends and a Joyful New Year.
Rachel
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