During this Christmas season, it’s easy to get depressed.
It’s even easier to get depressed if you look on Facebook and see all your friends and all the people you know living it up at parties while you may be alone.
Add to that a family death, and depression can be a sure thing.
Just a few weeks ago my mother passed away.
I like to be alone in times of stress. I’ve always been that way.
Additionally I don’t have any family close to where I live.
Nor am I particularly close to them.
I barely know them anymore.
But I’m not going to get depressed.
I’m going to spend the day thinking about the good times I had with my mom.
I’m gonna remember all the kind things she did for me when I was a little boy.
I’ll remember her nursing me back to health when I was a kid in elementary school. Those tiny, orange St. Joseph’s aspirin tablets and chicken noodle soup were the technology of the day when a kid had a sore throat and a cold.
I’ll remember her taking me to Dr. Slade in Doylestown to get my teeth fixed. After that we’d go out to eat at the Warrington Diner where I could order a Texas Tommy which was a hot dog wrapped in bacon and cheese. A Texas Tommy was high cuisine to me at the time. It still is.
I’ll remember her comforting me when my father died. I was thirteen years old. I can still see myself crying on her shoulder in the bathroom of our recreation room.
Many years later in my late fifties my mom, who was approaching ninety, and who couldn’t move quickly anymore, asked me to look into the closet to get a pair of her black shoes. I walked into the closet, and there were, and I’m not kidding you, at least a hundred pairs of black shoes. My mom had more shoes than Imelda Marcos. Where was I going to begin?
As John Milton said: The mind is its own place and can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven.
A person has to learn to cheer him or herself up.
There are always good things to fix your mind upon.
While I’m doing that, I’m going to make myself a hot pot of coffee and listen to Christmas songs.
Hey, I even bought some egg nog yesterday.
In the age of Facebook it’s easy to get conned into thinking that others are happy and living it up just because they’re smiling in a picture.
Undoubtably many are. And that’s a good thing.
But it’s also true that some people may be profoundly depressed even though they are seemingly having a great time with their family.
The best thing you can do is to make yourself happy.
It’s also important to try to spend Christmas thinking of others.
There’s no better way to get out of a funk than to do something for others.
So I’m gonna spend some time later today looking up charities on the Internet.
I’m going to let loose of a few bucks in memory of my mom.
It’s my choice.
And if you’re alone, it can be your choice as well.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley
Copyright 2021 Archer Crosley All Rights Reserved
Cowboy Archer 