Thursday, 18 November 2010 -- Day 333 (346)

Mom would've enjoyed this type of evening filled w/ family, friends, and community.  I enjoyed a drink w/ friends, dinner w/ my family (a rare treat lately), and the Parade of Lights down Central Avenue.  Yes, I was acting like a four-year-old, as Maddy accused me, applauding the lighted floats, begging for candy, waving at people on the floats, and joking w/ people around me.  Yet, amid all this happiness tonight, Doug's cousin lies fighting for her life in a hospital bed in Sioux Falls.  The longer I live the more I understand that to truly appreciate the good, we have to experience the bad.  There can be no happiness w/o sadness, no love w/o hate.  For this reason utopia will forever be out of reach here on earth.  It would stand to reason then that those, like Mom, who have entered heaven have no understanding of the pain and sadness we suffer as a result of their passing.  So it must further follow that for Mom's spirit to be drawn to me here on earth, I need to surround myself w/ only happiness, goodness, and love.