Beware the ides of Thanksgiving

Yes I know the title of this blog doesn't make much sense. The word "ides" refers to the 13 or 15 of the month in the roman calender depending on the month, and since Thanksgiving is not on of the months on the roman calender my title pretty much is nonsensical. If you, my devote non-comment writing reader, are familiar with an old friend of mine named Julius Caesar, then you might just happen to see the method to my madness (yes that too is a quote). "Beware the ides of March" was the warning given Caesar, as the 15 of March would ultimately become his death day. Enough of meaningless trivia and vocabulary. I once again find myself writing about death and I truly am starting to worry. Last week I wrote about the grandfather who passed away on Thanksgiving. This week I get to add to that tally. My friend's grandmother also passed away on Thanksgiving. I would stop there if that were all I had to say, but the story, unfortunately, goes on.
This last Tuesday, I received a phone call from a friend. He asked me if I had heard about our mutual friend Bruce and I said no. My buddy then informed me that Bruce had died on the day before Thanksgiving. Maybe now you understand my warning about Thanksgiving. Bruce's passing has really affected me. I am not normally prone to great displays of emotion, or even letting things affect me that much. Usually I am able to allow things to roll off my shoulder and quickly move on, even in the face of death. I know that really doesn't sound like the best way of dealing with things, and I agree, but I am how I am. I think it goes back to me learning to control my temper and having to not let emotion dictate my actions. I digress though. Bruce's passing has really affect me for multiple reasons. The first is that I considered him a pretty good friend. Yes he was 23 years my senior, but I really had a friendship with him. This was the first time a friend of mine has died. I've known people who have died, but usually they are much older, or in the case of the girl my grade who died, I learned about her death almost a year after the fact. In Bruce's case, we were friends, and I found out about his death pretty quickly. The second reason his death has really affected me is that I wasn't really happy with him after the last time we had been together. He had been rude to me and insulted me. Before he had done so I had felt like I should bring him a magazine to help inspire him. I had done this before and am not certain if it had really made a difference in his life, but I really try to do the things I feel I should do. In this case, after he treated me poorly I no longer wanted to do this for him, despite feeling I should. I now regret letting his actions dictate my actions. This situation might not make much sense to you, as I am being a little vague and you probably don't have much background on this situation, but needless to say I feel really bad that I will never be able to do a small act of kindness for my friend again. He is gone, and I allowed his actions to prevent me from acting how I felt I should. I miss him, and will use this experience to help motivate myself to act how I should act regardless of the actions of others.
Now onto a subject entirely unrelated to death. My teacher gave me an assignment this week to find someone more stressed than me and then do something nice for them. I literally laughed to myself when he said this because Lenora stresses more than probably anyone I know. This made it easy for me to fulfill this assignment. Lenora had a lot of homework to do this weekend so I decided that the best way to fulfill my assignment of being nice to Lenora was to go skiing. Yes that's right I went skiing in order to be nice to my wife. No we don't hate each other, quite the opposite actually, but I knew she needed a lot of time alone so she could do her homework. As my dad would say, "somebody has to make the sacrifice." My sacrifice just so happened to be going skiing. On a more serious note I did do more to be nice. One night she was gone for a bit and I cleaned up a lot of the house, and when she came home she saw me cleaning the front room and asked "what are you doing?" She thought I couldn't stand the mess anymore and just had to clean up. That goes to show you how much I clean. I guess that can become one of my new year's resolutions...help clean up more. Anyway, this blog is entirely too long, but some times that is how the cookie crumbles.