Boxing Day Blues

The hustle and bustle of Christmas day is over. I spent a wonderful day with my children and grandchildren.  My youngest son announced his engagement and I was thrilled for him and his fiance.  Then why am I so blue today.  On Boxing day I felt down all day and into the night and kept wondering why.  I had just finished reading a book called The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. I am a post war baby and as I grew up I listened to stories about the war from my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Later, when I became an adult and started my own business I had clients who went through the war. I lived in Holland, but my clients lived in different parts of Europe. Their stories were not much different then the childhood stories that were the fabric of my life. The pain in their eyes were the same as what I saw in my families eyes. This book tells the same stories and I now realize that this is why I felt so depressed after reading it. Don't get me wrong, it is an excellent read and a true depiction of the live they endured. Now we have another war torn area and I would bet that these refugees have the same haunting memories that my family lived with and will have for the rest of their lives. My heart breaks for them and all the lost souls of past wars. Don't you think we should have learned from the past and don't you think that as civilized people we should do better then what we did in the past. I am not advocating a Third World War, but I am saying that we must be able to come up with a better way to help these devastated humans that walk this earth with us. I wonder how we would cope if thrust into a similar situation. Would we be strong enough, brave enough or lucky enough to survive.