What Easter Used To Mean
First to all those celebrating the Easter holiday, Happy Easter. There was a time for me years ago, when the Easter holiday was about the religious story behind the holiday, and its significance, and when I was a child, it was all about the loot left by a mythical bunny rabbit.
Splitting my time behind the families of my ex-spouse’s families and my families was a difficult thing to do, because they always wanted us to spend all day, or at least most of the day with their families. Mine in general did not get much consideration. But one holiday that I fought for year after year, was Easter. It was the one holiday that I gave my father. There was no negotiating, it was his holiday. I put no time limit on the amount of time we spent there until we went off to my ex’s families. It was a day that my dad looked forward to, hosting a major meal, prepared by his kids, and we packed his small home. The highlight was watching my brother and I doing dishes. When I adopted my daughters, we held a miniature Easter egg hunt for my daughters. My dad asked for no other holiday or time of the year. This was the only thing he ever asked of me.
Tomorrow is Easter. But Easter will not be spent like other years. He is in the latter stages of lung cancer. There will be no big feast. In fact, he will not even get to see his granddaughters tomorrow. This is partially due to an arrangement I made with their mother, but there was a change with being able to see my dad that was not planned.
No, it will not be the usual Easter holiday for me. I will go to visit him later in the afternoon. In my heart, I am looking forward to Easter next year, when there is not so much heaviness in my heart.
I want you to know, that if you do celebrate this holiday, I hope it is a wonderful celebration for you. And even if you do or do not, I will leave you with this, so that my post is not a complete downer. Keep an eye on the internet for the annual Easter cartoon of two chocolate Easter bunnies. One is missing his rear end, the other is missing his ears, as those are popular pieces for kids to chew off first. So the bunny with no butt says, “My butt hurts” and the rabbit with no ears says “What? I can’t hear you.”
Happy Easter.
Paul's Heart 