Its Sunday, the end of a holiday weekend and we are tired. I am tired, the store clerks are tired, the cooks are tired, the phone operators are tired, the shoppers are tired. People are simply tired as it has been a big week with a lot of hype, relatives appearing for the first time in a year knowing not what to say and you knowing not what to say back. We are all tired. But still, life goes on and with life going on we have to continue the faith healing, the outlook of hope that the rest of the year will be bountiful and full of good tidings and joy. Well, screw the tidings part as I need nothing, only love, which I am finding is more and more difficult to receive as love itself is a lost and forgotten emotion.

We can do for another, be helpful, be generous, converse more, ask more questions, offer more information back all in trying to better the self and better the one who simply wants to be loved. In my case it has been an ongoing and constant battle to receive love from my biological parents for as long as I was able to remember what love was and as I prepare to exit this world on to a new adventure, living in their home, I realize more and more that possibly my parents are incapable of loving me for they first and foremost need to learn how to love themselves and this they never did.

My father talks in memories and the older he gets, the further into his past he goes speaking as though his mother's homemade soup was on his palette yesterday instead of forty some odd years ago and my mother, she speaks of her family as well but not nearly as much. She speaks of surface things. Nothing too important, too deep and rarely uses the word love. She seldom offers her assistance as she believes she always is giving and no one gives to her and yet if you sit back and watch, everything around her is catered to her liking. It is all about her or she has no interest at all. She bickers and banters with my father over the differences they have, always threatening with something, a refusal of sorts as he is limited in his abilities and with me, she ignores me. Never says I love you after I tell her how much she is loved and tells others she simply does not understand me.

What she needs to be telling others is she is incapable of understanding me because she does not understand herself. The love I have brought into this house makes them both feel uncomfortable. It is out of the ordinary and different, almost as if something is truly wrong, Sadly, when I exit, they might realize what I was all about and how much I had to offer, not in a material sense, but in the ability to love and love unconditionally. The dogs understand it and thus see me as their keeper, the leader of the pack as I give them simple things to survive but tell them deep stories about my life, my experiences and they listen, especially Ashley who is content only when she is by my side and when I am missing, something is missing in her simple world as she is told constantly, papa loves you, as I do.

So as I watch people begin to 'deck the halls' and sing fa la la la la, I will continue to love to tell others I love them even if all I hear in return is silence and someday, maybe while I am still alive, I will be told that I too am loved as much as I love others, unconditionally.