SUPERNOVA*

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Christmas Misery

I… am having a really rough go of it right now.

Christmas has always been such a special time for the family; it was really Grandma’s day. Even the Christmas I was sixteen, after she’d moved into the Nursing home, we still did everything we could to make her happy, to give her a real holiday…

Sometimes I feel like with her gone the family has no reason to come together anymore. We all have our own lives right?

But this is the first Christmas since she crossed over… and I made it through all the other firsts ok. I handled the first Mothers Day, the first Memorial day, the first Fourth, the first Halloween, the first Thanksgiving…

But Christmas was her day. All the family would show up the 23rd and leave the 26th. Our little two bedroom house with one bathroom would be packed with presents and people and food. Our tree would be perfect, filled with all of these memory ornaments and when we would decorate she would tell me the story of every one- even though I knew them by heart.

Thinking of these things makes me feel very far away from that little girl. I don’t see the world through those wide blue eyes anymore, I don’t pretend to be a Princess anymore. I don’t welcome love with open arms and hold on with both hands to anything anymore.

I know that this is a part of growing up, of growing older. I know that in time I will cease to look at the life I have no with grief and mourning for the life that is gone. I know that these are just growing pains and the leaving behind of childhood. I know that. But I don’t yet believe it.

I think of the life we shared, for the first sixteen years, I think of the stories I used to get so annoyed hearing a million times, of the times I ducked out on dinner because I didn’t want to deal with her or my mother. I think of all the Christmases I spent with my father those last years she was really with it… and it hurts me. It makes me sick those times with him with his family; those aren’t real to me. Those aren’t the moments I go to when I need to feel warmth and love.

I know that clinging to the ghost of Christmas Past isn’t healthy. I know that we will never recapture that innocence, that light and love and goodness. It is lost because we are lost. I do not blindly accept the story of Jesus, I do not believe in midnight mass and the weeping virgin. Without those things the magic of my childhood Christmas seems gone… and with each passing week I drift further from my memories of that time.

I feel…or fear perhaps is a better word. I fear that if I don’t cling to those thoughts, those memories, those traditions, I will lose every possible presence of her in my life. I’ve worked so hard to avoid my grief, to block it out and just accept that she’s gone, she’s in the dirt and it’s over… I’ve lost so many little pieces of her.

Because I have not allowed myself to grieve, I can’t celebrate her life. I mean I try. I really really try but… thoughts of her just bring sadness, emptiness, a feeling of loss rather than the happiness of having had.

xoxo SJ at 10:05 AM.

About Me

Name ♥ Sara
Birthday ♥ o1//o2
Horoscope ♥ Aquarius
School ♥ Of Hard Knocks

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Listening to ♥ Blue October Reading ♥ Reservation Blues

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