Happy Christmas Eve Eve

I just returned from an early family Christmas weekend. I don't know how to feel right now - just exhausted I guess. Sad. Guilty for the simplicity of my life. Conflicted over feeling happy to be alone again. Some serious things happened - a relative in another town, rushed into the hospital with a potentially life-threatening condition; a long-feared diagnosis for the future prospects of a developmentally challenged child; a what-can-you-call-it-but-a breakdown by an adult clearly struggling to accept either of those events. (I don't think he would call it that, but when someone is suddenly spouting things in anger that you can sense have been held inside for years, you have to think something is breaking.) I am not at the center of any of these things, yet they touch and torment those around me.

Fortunately, a phone call just now seems to indicate that the life-threatening illness is possibly less so.