Can’t shake those holiday blues?
If you’ve got the holiday blues this season, you’re not alone. Billions of your fellow human beings share your fate.
“I feel better already. Thanks.”
Sure, reading about the blues doesn’t help. In fact, it probably makes you even more depressed but so be it. Misery loves company.
Actually, every year, I think about depression quite a bit over Christmas, and every year that passes by, I lose more friends and acquaintances, and it reminds me of how fleeting this life really is.
I almost wish the holiday season was more low key or didn’t bring to people’s minds the number of family and friends they lost over the past year.
It’s even worse for nursing home residents whose bleak thoughts return to Christmases past when they were still mobile and independent. The sort of thoughts that undoubtedly turn dark and desperate as they consider their present depressing surroundings.
Those of us who have already seen parents pass away, not to mention childhood friends, are reminded that our turn is coming, praying that we’re the lucky ones who don’t get sick and infirm as we move further down this road we call life.
Reviewing our genetic makeup (age of parents when they died, etc.), and our lifestyle choices (overweight, heavy smoker, lover of tacos stuffed with mollejas (sweetbreads), border-line alcoholic, dabbler in meth), we try and pick what the odds are that we’ll live healthy into our old age.
You know the trouble with ill health caused by lifestyle choices? They come on slow. Heavy smoker, you don’t know about COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) until it bites you on the rear. Cirrhosis of the liver? Don’t know for sure it’s coming until it arrives on the scene and it’s too late to change because your liver is already past the point of no return. You eat too much sugar? The onslaught of diabetes took years to develop, but here it is along with bad leg circulation, etc.
As we move into the new year, the contact list on my cell is at the top of my list when it comes to depressing topics.
Why? Because every year, people drop by the wayside and die, and when I see their names and phone numbers, it brings forth the notion — death is really pretty damn depressing when you think about it, because when someone dies, our loss is permanent, at least in this world.
Sprinkle my ashes in a mug of German brew when I die and pour it all down the sink, because I’m out of here — hopefully when I turn 112. That’s the plan anyway.
Then I think of what I might look like at 112, and the picture even scares me.
This Christmas season, if you want to feel less depressed, just concentrate on the positive things in life, even though they may sometimes feel like very few.
Be sad for the family and friends we lost in recent years but be thankful we had them for as long as we did.
Like the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem says: I hold it true, whate’ere befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; Tis better to have loved and lost; Than never to have loved at all
In the meantime, Merry Christmas to those of you who take the time to read The Advance. From the cast and crew here at the newspaper, a Merry Christmas to all and a very happy 2025.