For new readers, who may not have read my author notes, this is written in a conversational way as I talk to my deceased husband. When I refer to someone just as "you" this means I am addressing my husband, Evan.

Christmas of 1996, turned out well after a frantic push to get everything done in time. After everyone stuffed themselves on lunch, we opened all the gifts and our house became a disaster of boxes and wrapping paper. We were exhausted and vegged out in front of a roaring fire. Food was still out waiting for people to have another go at it before going home. Gary, Maxine’s son, called and said he’d celebrated Christmas with his deceased wife's family, and he wanted to bring two of Cindy's nieces over to show them our sun-room. It was pointless to try to get the house back in order for more company. He and the girls visited for awhile with us before leaving.

I was thrilled to get a camcorder for Christmas and was busy taking videos of the family. You got the chainsaw you’d been wanting. Everyone seemed pleased with their gifts. We did learn a bit of interesting news from Kimberly and Don. Kimberly was pregnant again. I’ve never been one of those mothers who screams and goes nuts when another grandchild is on the way. It was good that Lauren would have a sibling not quite three years younger, but we were concerned for them financially, since Don hadn’t as yet gotten a successful chiropractic practice off the ground.

The day after Christmas, we woke up to the shocking news that a Colorado child beauty queen, Jon Benet Ramsey, had been murdered. This tragedy would dominate the news for weeks, and even after all these years, the actual killer has never come to justice. For a long time, the parents themselves were under investigation. I’m sure there are those, even today, who still doubt the parents' innocence. It was hard for us to imagine anything so horrible.

Connie and Charlie were finding out things about each other they didn’t seem to realize before getting married. Connie insisted Charlie take her to see the Nutcracker, but he hated the idea. He wanted her to go back-packing with him and claimed he’d thought she would have enjoyed it as much as he did. She said it wasn’t her idea of fun and she wasn’t going. You and I had realized we’d both had interests and hobbies the other didn’t share. People need to learn to work around those differences. We wondered if the two of them were mature enough to do that.

Right after Christmas, both you and Dad had a bad case of bronchitis. Dad was spitting up blood and had to see a doctor. The doctor x-rayed and said he didn’t see anything unusual other than Dad’s heart was enlarged. He prescribed something which helped, but Dad was convinced he wouldn’t be alive much longer. I think he based it on the idea he’d already lived longer than his parents, and he had the weird notion that people didn’t live over two years with a pacemaker.

We were concerned about Carol. She had always been excessively spiritual minded and never failed to attend church regularly. Now that the rest of us were all attending church every week, she was backing off. She hadn’t been as interested in church since she’d gone to The Bridge for help getting past her marriage break-up and what she believed were her co-dependency problems.

Now she told us the church members were too judgmental. She said the services were the same week after week. The sermons were about getting ready for Christ’s return, but they weren’t offering any help with the personal problems everyone was dealing with. We didn’t know how she expected them to deal with everyone’s complicated personal problems from the pulpit.

I’d been doing handwriting analysis for a lot of years, and our kids were always bringing me samples to analyze. Carol had me do her roommate’s writing, and she showed Kim what I’d found. Kim was blown away by how accurate it was without me ever having met her. The one thing I remember about the analysis was that Kim’s personality was not compatible with Carol’s. I also remembered it has been a long time since I have analyzed anyone's writing. I gave up that hobby years ago. It was time consuming, because I kept having to refer to books I had on the subject. I wanted to make sure I didn't get the traits wrong.

The new year started out extremely warm. It was 73 degrees on January 1st. The entire first week remained unseasonably warm. Then we had a bad storm, and a couple of days later, the cold came in with a vengeance. Our kids had spent an excessive amount of money, and the New Year saw them taking gifts back to exchange for money. Connie and Charlie went to Mississippi to have a delayed Christmas with his family, and Carol went to the beach in Florida with a friend. Tammy had gone to high school with Christi, but it seemed she and Carol had more in common. You were busy trimming many trees with your new chainsaw. After having trimmed most of them, the switch went bad, and you had to return it for another one. Since you’d only had it a couple of weeks, it was still under warranty.  

Dad continued to have problems, and it turned out his lab work showed he had pneumonia. The pills the doctor prescribed had almost cleared the pneumonia, but had left him with serious diarrhea. One morning, I came to check on Dad, and he was in a terrible mess, the bed was soaked. He said he’d been calling me all night, and I’d failed to hear him. He claimed he’d broken his arm during the night trying to get it under the cover, and he couldn’t use it to help him stand up to pee. His arm wasn’t swollen, but it hurt so much he was calling me for help all day. I wanted to take him to have it x-rayed, but it was 5 degrees outside and he refused to go out. I put ice on it to try to keep it from swelling and help him with the pain.

Christi was still using our van and insisting we loan her the money to buy a used car. She got a $500 bonus at work, but when we told her she needed to put that money toward a car, she had a hissy fit. She wanted to use the money to get some spider veins in her legs, which no one could see but her, operated on.

Connie called us upset because Charlie backed out of their drive without looking, and someone, driving fast, plowed into their new car. It was his fault, and although the insurance covered all but the deductible, it would mean the premium would go up. The car would be in the shop for a weeks, so they had to get a rental car.

You’d promised Connie on her birthday back in June you'd pay for her to get a college class ring, and you told her to go ahead and order whatever she wanted. I thought she took advantage of us, because no one wears class rings for long. She could have gotten one for around $300, but the one she picked was over $400. It seemed our children believed we were made of money.