The Christmas songs, decor and celebrations seem to start earlier and earlier each year. For those experiencing a season of grief during the holidays, it can feel like the most un-wonderful time of the year.
I had started writing this post on December 2. That was a day I felt consumed with his memory, a day all of my thoughts revolved around what we should be doing as a family at the holidays if he were here. How different our life would be. That week I had started receiving Christmas cards of happy families and while I'm very thankful and appreciative to the people who didn't take us off their mailing list or instead of the card they sent out to everyone else, they sent us a special card to let us know we were in their thoughts and prayers this year, I was saddened that we didn't have a picture as a family of three to reciprocate.
We did decorate the house for Christmas. I always feel that my house is most beautiful during this time of year, when it is decked in lights, holly and jolly. We added some new decorative pieces that read JOY so it would lift our spirits as needed. As we were hanging ornaments, we stopped to pause and Max said "our tree is beginning to tell a story." As I gaze at it, it is kind of like a scrapbook. We have ornaments received as wedding gifts from our December wedding three years ago. We have an ornament to represent different adventures we've shared together all over the world. We have ornaments from our respective Universities and things that depict where we came from like sports teams, jobs we've held and sorority symbols. This year we have received some very special ornaments in memory of Hudson. From a framed picture of his sweet face, angels and angel wings, a beautiful silver medallion with a fitting quote, and one monogrammed with his initials. That HJS that will always represent him and whatever future children we will hopefully be blessed with one day. Looking at it tells the story of our past, our present and of a future that we hope to have, and he is part of our story. The ornament with those initials is something that can help give me hope of those future babies when I feel very beat down this holiday season. It is so special to have these dear keepsakes to continue to tell our family's story on our tree.
I had a draft for this post that I wrote, deleted, re-wrote, re-worked, deleted again, etc. about five times. My original premise was my real life Christmas wish list but when I saw this article posted by Angela Miller in one of my favorite grief Facebook Groups, A Bed For My Heart, that I realized it was everything I was feeling and wanting to express.This is exactly what I want to share with those grieving this Christmas and for those looking to understand.
Angela's full article is in the link above. This is a paraphrased excerpt from her full post with some of my own additional commentary and shared feelings that I feel best applies to me and our Hudson. Her original words are in bold.
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I had a hard time creating a Christmas list this year. Simply because there just was not much that anyone could give me that would help fill the void for what I truly want. Ever since you were taken from us, certain things in life, like Christmas, just doesn’t have the same excitement and joy as it once did.
No offense to baby Jesus. In fact, I quite love him– a lot– but the sight of Him in the manger makes me ache for you, my own “baby,” beyond any words, in any language. Beyond any ache I ever knew was humanly possible to survive. The birth of Jesus completed the Holy Family. The contrast of that next to mine, a family forever incomplete, is too much for me to handle most Christmases as a bereaved mom. Every time I hear "Mary Did You Know" or "Little Drummer Boy" and even the non-secular favorite "Where Are You Christmas" my eyes swell with tears.
Grief, Christmas and rooms overflowing with predominantly non-grieving people mix about as well as oil and water. I wish more people could really, truly get that. As in, get it without being bereaved, or grieved, or any of that. Just get it, period.
For every holiday picture taken, meal eaten, carols sung, families gathered, trees decorated, Christmas morning presents opened, are always those achingly incomplete. The joy of the season and the ache of the ever missing you taunt me like a cruel, unending joke. Our family will be forever incomplete. And there’s nothing that could make that broken circle close the way it should– like a kiss beneath the mistletoe gone horribly wrong, two lips never meeting as one– the edges of our family circle are permanently broken, never again will we be a family complete.
Sigh.
I don't want to have to “celebrate” the season this way, wishing for impossibilities that can never be, longing for what is no longer.
Some moments are surprisingly survivable, sometimes even filled with unexpected moments of laughter and joy. Others are barely bearable– a land mine of grief explosions grinchingly waiting for me around every corner.
Oh. my. heart.
If only it could be understood that it is exactly because of the holidays– the gatherings, the pressure to be merrily on, the exaggerated empty chair that is often unrecognized and not spoken of in a room overflowing with a family otherwise glaringly complete– that leaves a grieving parent spinning in the holy-daze of grief. Just when I think I’m doing ‘ok’, a half cup of tears unexpectedly floods my perfectly measured Christmas cookie batter, and drowns me right along with it– a not so ironic analogy indicative of an entire season filled with far too much salt in a bereaved parent’s wounds. Or, if things have been feeling slightly jolly and even joy-filled, I’ll find myself perpetually holding my breath, shoulders up to my ears, cautiously waiting for the other shoe to drop without even realizing it. Or with the anxiety of a mother scanning the crowd for her lost child, one might find me relentlessly surveying every holiday gathering for mine, while also making note of every blessed Kleenex box, bathroom location, the quickest escape routes and nearest exists that will lead to a corner where I can safely let my tears for you endlessly fall.
If one were to ask me what I really want, I’d sob that all I really want for Christmas is this:
(edited and adapted from the writer's list, some are her shared words, others reflect my own wishes)
1) A normal life, one with you in it, growing bigger and older every day instead of this tidal wave of grief washing over me at times I want more than anything to be happy and enjoy the sights and sounds of the season. To feel truly alive again, instead of trying to survive underneath the weight of life and death I feel in every single breath.
2) A Christmas card with all three of us and Georgie pup. One complete with your cheeky and gummy grin, maybe snapped as we turn toward you and smile brighter or laugh. A family that is knowing of true joy, not this pain and emptiness.
3) To celebrate a Christmas with all of our family this year with you. A holiday that started with you last Christmas, as we shared the news you were coming with our loved ones. With my side of the family, you would be the only grandbaby and it would have been an exciting first for us all. On your daddy's side of the family, you would be joining Brooks as the second boy cousin with Olivia and now Kiley as the two girls. You and Kiley would be having your first Christmases together, cousins around the same age. How fun it would have been to watch you grow together.
4) The untainted joy of Christmas, the birth of possibility, of dreams untainted by the broken, jagged, shattered pieces of our missing puzzle piece, our missing you.
5) To be expecting new life again, carrying your little brother or sister. How badly we want to fill our home with little ones, as Mommy and Daddy to you in Heaven and to children on this Earth.
6) The space at our table, full with a high chair, that would later become a booster seat, and then a chair once you are big enough to sit in one. You would be there, full of life, full of laughter, full of every amazing part of you.
7) A circle of loving hearts who could understand that although I carry both the ache and the joy of the season in me all at once, the ache often times feels stronger and more overwhelming, because the joy of the season is jollying everywhere, greeting my broken places with a slap in the face, and a swift punch to the gut with every photo of a child on Santa's lap, every pregnancy announcement, gender reveal and baby born. If only the world could understand that for me, the holidays feel more like an emotional war zone, than an exciting season of Yuletide cheer.
There you have it. One wish for every month you have been gone and should have been with us instead.
All I care about is that we’re together as a family, creating priceless memories that money can’t buy and death can’t steal.
Oh yes, and one last thing. I hope to figure out how to keep your light on inside my heart bright enough to make my pores glow with the light of you all year long. That’s my Christmas wish.
If it happens, I figure that’s the closest I’ll ever get to having all I really want for Christmas–
Our precious, perfect, wonderful You.
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