A Celebration of life

Before i continue with the life and times of mom and dad, i suppose i should write something about dealing personally with their Aristotlean bifurcation. I'm not sure what that means, but i got the term "Aristotlean bifurcation" from a friend who likes it and wants to popularize its use, so i thought i'd help him out. I think it might actually be apt because it sounds like the culling of a philosophy by one person in order to throw at another person to argue a point, much like monkeys throw their poop.

I'm getting near the end of my parents saga, or at least, what i dare to tell, and the fact that i have yet to inject any personal feelings regarding their shenanigans, should be a clue in itself.

I don't blame my parents for anything, except maybe for sheltering us a little too much. I don't remember even resenting not having birthdays or Christmas celebrations growing up; but when Trish and i started popping out those babies, and she coming from a Catholic family, i started experiencing my first real celebrations of those things. I realized then that it would have been nice to have those memories with my family growing up. But then it got to a point where Trish and i were celebrating 6 birthdays, 4 major holidays, 4 minor holidays, and 2 anniversaries a year; i think that's just too much celebration. You think that's just 16 days out of the year, but if you factor in the planning, preparation, and execution, well.... 

Trish thinks i suck at celebrating and i think she blames my parents for that.

I think that when you grow up without traditional celebrations, you learn to appreciate that every time you are able to jump, roll, crawl, or just fall out of bed, it is the ultimate celebration that is life.

My parents gave me a gift: the meager, but happy, childhood that i had. Is my happy childhood null and void because i find out mom and dad had a wacked out disfunctional side?

I was not apathetic, but i didn't start drinking, or feeling ashamed as i learned of their past. I took it in stride; this was my parents past, and they were not asking me to do or feel anything concerning that life.

This being Mother's Day, i should say something about Evangelina Santillano Soto from San Juan del Rio: she baked really good cookies from scratch without using measuring utinsils, and she would stop me from eating too many of them.

When the doctors finally found the cancer that was making my mom sick for all those years, she held on for another two years, and it was dad that was there for her during those two years. He took her to all her appointments and did what had to be done to make her comfortable.