Christmas Whoopass and the tiny tree!

When the holidays come with the music and the smells, the shopping and the crowds, the families all together, and the expectations that we will still try to be the jolliest fucking house on the block....it is the ass whooping we know is coming but we have no escape from.  We don’t know when or what it will look like, but we know it is coming.  It may be on Christmas eve when the kids come and that one chair remains empty.  Or on Christmas day when we forget for just a second that they are gone and we say “Wait – we can’t start!  We are missing someone!”  and we are. And we will be forever now. It is the stocking hung, maybe…or not, because what do you put in there and where does it go afterwards?

For the past few years we have been putting up what I call the "Tiny Tree", and we have been using it as our only Christmas tree, other than outdoor one that has now outgrown its Christmas lights and needs to be updated. For the first few years after Rye passed, we didnt decorate at all and I don't even remember the first Christmas we had without him.  It's all just a blur for about the first two years I guess.

This tree is all decked for Christmas if it was 5 years ago!  You cant see the lights but they are there and the tree has grown so much that it has outgrown the lights and just has a very jolly belly section now! 

The "tiny tree" was given to us by the Hubby's Mother, she always wanted Christmas to be special - no matter the circumstances - as my mother does too.  Christmas was always over the top in the Grands house!  In a good way of course!  She passed exactly 16 months to the day after Rye did and three days after Christmas.  It's now another "ass-whoopin day" for this side of the family.

The "Star" on the "tiny tree" is part of a beer box cut to allow lights to shine through.  Miller High Life always has Christmas colors on the box this time of year! Most of the year actually! Its a funny thing from the Hubbys parents who always said their first Christmas they were so broke that they decorated their tree with beer can ornaments!  Im pretty sure they didnt actually do that (because....Meemaw!), but it makes a good memory story for us and a good lesson in use what you have! ALso, its not such a serious tree that it demands reverence.....

We have stocking and a great Mantle - we have to be careful to hang some of them up higher now - because - Naughty Ike likes to chew on them if no one is home and he is left to his own devices!

Here he is all salty because I wanted him to lay in his bed - yes I gave up after he actually laid down here!  See the tree in the background?  It is actually just a gang of tree lights hung from the curtian rod and draped to look like a tree!  Creative Hubby moment there - but it works for pictures!  Noone wanted to untangle all of those lights! DO NOT ask what the star is made of!  Haha!

We have been lucky so far that Ike does not like electrical cords as much as he likes TV remotes!

Christmas dinner of "Messy shrimp" a family favorite for years!

We have been having our family Christmas a few days before actual Christmas for a couple of reasons, 1) Scheduling conflicts and trying to not make everything so rushed that we can't find our breath, and 2) it takes the pressure off of having a "perfect" day, since it's not really THE DAY!

It works pretty well for us - except that it sometimes stretches out the days and Christmas seems long for us - but it seems long anyway no matter how we do it, but getting to have the kids here is such a blessing, and makes it seem not so bad!  Then if we have moments where we can't breathe and the tears threaten to overtake us, everyone in the room understands and gives a little space until we can think and breathe again.

Even the Christmas pictures have had to wait a bit, I am trying to do better about taking them now, but it was always....all of us....

and now it isn't.  It is still so strange to have pictures for special occaisions without him in them.  Holidays are a "painful joy" most of the time now, it has eased from me wanting to run around everywhere and scream "Christmas Blows"! Which I still want to do but I have a clear understanding that it is wildly inappropriate for the rest of the people around me - or at least most of them.  Other Loss Mothers and I mostly survive the day and we welcome the night so that this day can be over, hopefully without wrecking it for anyone else.  That part supposedly gets easier to hide, I have heard.

This one is actually a New Years picture maybe?  But its a perfect example of a holiday picture, mouth open, eyes closed and making weird faces!  Never fails!  Great memories and a favorite picture with both my boys!

I am sharing this from the Facebook site “The Ugly Shoes Club” (Click the link to see thesite) because it really hits the nail on the head about how this goes, especially at the holidays.  Ours starts at about Halloween….

The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one whose children are well and intact can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children have absorbed, what they bear. Our children now come to us through every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal, every kid on a scooter. We seek contact with their atoms – their hairbrushes, toothbrushes, their clothing (their Christmas Stocking).

We reach out for what was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded. A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed,it often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter there is to be cut deeply and torn anew, each time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where our children now reside. This will be so for years to come and it will change us, profoundly. At some point, in the distant future, the edges of that hole will have tempered and softened, but the empty space will remain–a life sentence.

Our friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve for our children in part, through talking about them, and our feelings for having lost them. Some go there with us; others cannot and, through their denial, add a further measure, however unwitting, to an already heavy burden. Assuming that we may be feeling “better” 6 months later is simply “to not get it”. The excruciating and isolating reality that bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it is a trap–those whose compassion and insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And yet, somehow, there are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us and stay, to our immeasurable comfort. They have understood, again each in their own way, that our children remain our children through our memory of them. Their memory is sustained through speaking about them and our feelings about their death. Deny this and you deny their life. Deny their life and you have no place in ours.

We recognize that we have moved to an emotional place where it is often very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful, and the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that accompanies us, sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it its own voice, we fear we would become truly unreachable and so we remain “strong” for a host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings, we would be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise.

People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard. Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every experience– and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we will have actually managed to survive when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point nor who will still be with us.

We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them. This is our attempt. For those untarnished by such events, who wish to know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap.

From My Special Angel: For Loved Ones Lost

 

We are having the whitest of white Christmasses and if you aren't I hope for you that today will provide one.  We have about 4' total of snow now and last night had a big storm with winds and snow blowing all around, even sticking on the side of the house!

I hope that you have amazingly blessed Christmas and Holidays, that it's white if you want it that way and if you have friends who have suffered a loss, remember to help them remember the love and the light that was their loved one, and give them space to breathe and survive the ass-whoopin!

Blessed Be!