Anyone who has known me longer than five seconds will not be surprised by my over-doing it on the holiday cheer. This year, though, I almost feel compelled to over do it. To plan and schedule and book. To pick out cute dresses for B and redo our family decorations. To keep going and going and going with all the festivity and joy I can muster. I feel like if I slow down, if I stop for even one breath, my usual Christmas joy will be replaced by all the pain of the last Christmas season.
So, when RB talks about Thanksgiving this year and our schedule to go to my aunt's, I throw myself into looking up new recipes and finding new Thanksgiving books for B.
I don't want to remember how last year, the day after Thanksgiving, we were driving to Virginia with so much joy and anticipation of the celebration that lay head. Or how Daddy's voice sounded unrecognizable when I picked up the phone and sent a panic through my entire body. How the hours dragged as we tried to make the seven hours left of our drive go as quickly as possible. How all our dearest friends and family sounded as I forced myself to robocall them all at my dad's request. "She has had a stroke. We don't really know more than that. Yes, of course I will keep you updated. No, there is nothing you can do."
As I face down the last few weeks of my twenties, RB softly prods me to say I want to do anything - anything at all - for my 30th. My dearest friends whisper to me about it in hushed tones.
"Let's just get wine. We can all cry. I can't imagine a birthday without your mom."
I gave RB the go ahead to plan, though. To schedule something with those we love even if it is low key and I cry on the way there and back. A little joy during what will probably be a bleak and wallowing month.
And if I let myself wallow long enough, all I will be able to think about is my last birthday with you. Taking my shift at the hospital, my hand holding yours, my head on the hospital bed. My phone beeped and buzzed with so much love from so many others and all I wanted was you. I begged you and God both, and equally, that you would wake up. You would dry my tears and wish me a happy birthday. That night, confidently, I told Daddy I wasn't opening the presents from you. They
were so beautifully and lovingly wrapped. I wasn't going to do it, I said. I would wait to do it with you, when you were well and could see the enjoyment of what you had so painstakingly purchased. Then, when it was all said and done and those hopes were finally and forever dashed, the presents sat in our house. For months, I stared at them. Unable to open them. They were the last I would ever receive from you. Opening them was just another step in saying goodbye I wasn't willing to take just yet.
Every year since RB and I have been married, I have been done shopping by Thanksgiving. After returning home from Thanksgiving dinner, we have opened wine, put in a Christmas movie, and I have wrapped all the gifts for hours. We wake up the next morning to the shopping and material busyness of the season over, and only the fun left. This year, I have barely been able to make a list. I am putting it off so in those quiet moments of December, I can run out for one more gift or to check one more relative off my list.
Last year, your list was almost done. Daddy had set up your wrapping station in his office so you could spend the evenings together. You would wrap while he wrote or played on his computer. He asked me to finish the packages. I spent hours sorting through your notes and tags, trying to decipher which nephew Nathan received which wrapped candy. My fingers lingered on the ribbons you had already curled and the scraps of paper you had saved just in case you found the perfect tiny gift to fit them. There was so much love in all of it. So much thought and caring and genuine goodwill towards everyone you adored.
I will do a 5K under the Christmas lights with some of my sweetest friends next weekend. Others want to wander the Atlanta Botanical Gardens at night. RB wants to give B her first hot chocolate and drive around the suburbs taking in the houses in all their Christmas glory.
That is how I want to think of Christmas lights. Surrounded by those I love, enjoying our time together. The last lights I remember seeing were in the neighborhood where I grew up. The houses pristine, the families merry and celebrating. I drove down the street so bright with all the festivity, exhausted from another 12 hours at the hospital. All I wanted to do was scream. How can everyone else be so happy? So cheerful? Don't they know the world is ending?
As we talk about gifts for B, we turn first to St Nikolaus Day. She will put her shoes out on the 6th and wake up on the 7th to see what the German Santa has brought to her. Growing up, this was always such a fun day - the transition from my birthday to it really being Christmas time in our house. We would wake to the smell of coffee cake and bacon. Our shoes would be overflowing - not with anything grandiose or over the top, but with the little things kids love. Christmas socks and lip gloss. Stickers and new art supplies. One year, Santa brought me "The Magic Locket." I was so excited to read it and wear the locket that accompanied the sweet story of a girl finding her own worth. The locket has long since been lost, but the book sits on B's shelf waiting to become a part of her childhood memories just as St Nikolaus Day will be.
St Nikolaus day last year, we didn't even put out her shoes. RB was driving up from GA the evening of the 7th, doing his best to support our little family in two different states. We gave her the presents with little fanfare, but our sweet little 1 1/2 year old was overjoyed with the Fisher Price Santa Workshop. Her face lit up and she played with it for hours over the following dark weeks. I could barely watch the whole scene. How dare we be doing St Nikolaus Day in your house and you not be there to share it? You would be loving this, Dad kept telling us. Loving every minute of it. But you weren't there. You were in a hospital bed and as each day ticked by it sunk in a little more that you would probably never be coming home. We tried to pretend like that wasn't true. We talked about St Nikolaus Day 2014. How you would delight in seeing the kids set out their shoes. How you would have special treats for them you hadn't told Molly or me about beforehand. We kept talking about the distant future, as if it would all be okay then. It would all be set right again. I knew, though, I think by St Nikolaus Day. I could feel it in my bones that this was done; that we were on borrowed time with you.
RB has been measuring our den, trying to determine the new placement of the Christmas tree now that every inch of our house seems to be covered in pink and princesses. He wants to go to a Christmas tree farm and take B. We will start off the season with a new family tradition. And I agree. I google the best tree farms in the area and make sure it is penciled in our calendars. It will be another distraction, followed by the hours it will take to decorate and beautify. Followed, of course, by the countless hours of helping B take the non-breakable ornaments off the tree and put them back on again and again and again.
There were always so many beautiful trees in our home growing up. You always had a tree in my bedroom that was my very own and had multi-colored lights that shone brightly all night. Everyone else in the family hated the multi-colored lights but they were my absolute favorite. I would lie awake at night watching them, basking in the warmth that the lights and your love exuded. Now, when I think of your Christmas trees, I see the very last one. You had just finished decorating it when you had your stroke. It was tall and beautiful and took up almost the entire sun room. Someone turned it on the night you passed. Me, maybe? Or, RB to distract B? Maybe it was one of the women from the church. That first night, though, with you gone it shone magnificently - the only light in an otherwise dark and hurting house. Neither Daddy nor I could stomach going upstairs. He wasn't ready to face an empty room without you and I felt too numb to move. So, we slept on the couch. He in your favorite chair. Me curled in a ball across from the tree. So many times I woke up that night, awash in the glow from your perfect tree. My heart filled with the love of Christmas and all the joy and warmth it brings. Then suddenly, each time, the reality of where I was and what we had all lost would hit and the lights of the tree would become blurred in my tears.
We are filling up our calendar quickly - scheduling and scheduling and scheduling some more. Movies and ornament exchanges. Cookie parties and ballet recitals. Joy and cheer and Christmas mirth. In January, we will slow down again. And it will probably hit me all over again. For now, though, I just want to keep moving and celebrating. Doing all the holiday things that have always been so magical. The ones that remind me of my sweet Momma and how much she loved this time of year. The ones that take me back to being a little girl again, so loved and so happy. The ones that inspire me to be a better mom to B, to fill her every days with the magic of this season.
It won't be the same. It will never be the same again. At least, though, we can have a little bit of the Christmas spirit. We just have to keep going.
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| Christmas 2013: B playing with Momma's last decorations |
:)
ReplyDeleteI love you, friend.
ReplyDeleteSweet words, dearest cousin. ❤
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