A little sad

Every year for Christmas my parents have an "open door" policy of sorts. We have always had the immediate family do the Christmas Eve thing, where we open our gifts and hang out, and then Christmas morning is super laid-back (except for my mom who cooks kick-ass Swedish pancakes and bacon and sausage) and we all open stockings. So every year there are random people over for Christmas morning, friends, co-workers, whoever wants to come over, and we always have extra stockings for people that just show up. It seems weird I suppose, that this huge holiday is always spent with people that we might not even know (aunts and uncles will also bring folks over that we have never met), but it really is awesome. It's one of those things that I hope I do when I'm old like my parents, just have an open door to anyone, even if it's Christmas.

Anyway, for the last five or six years our friends that we hang and drink with on weekends with the two daughters have come for Christmas, as their families are agnostic and don't really do Christmas, and it has been fun. The girls make it fun just because they're kids and it's tons of fun to shop for things to stuff their stockings, and their parents make it fun because they always seem to have this I-haven't-had-a-Christmas-this-fun-since-I-was-a-kid look on their faces when we sit down for breakfast. My mom says that her brothers would have a Swedish pancake eating contest every Christmas morning when they were younger, so I started that with the girls, complete with a trophy that gets engraved each year with the winner and their pancake number that whomever wins takes home, and it's just awesome.

So, this family that comes each year, they bring their (the dad's) mentally retarded uncle, Ben, from Oregon or somewhere, and he has a blast with us. He's not easy to understand, and every year we give him a blanket or something like that, not knowing him well enough to get him something truely thoughtful, but it's always nice to have him there, and the girls adore their great uncle, so good times are had by all. Anyway, Ben died today, after falling and breaking his neck last week, and it's just a bit sad. I'm sad for me, because I know that he's gone and it makes me wonder what happens next, I'm sad for the girls because while I believe in honesty with kids it sucks to have to actually be honest with them and tell them that he's just not coming back, I'm sad for my mom who was sad when I told her and I couldn't take that away from her, and I'm sad for the girls' parents who are going to miss him worse than the rest of us. Rest in peace, Ben, you will be missed.