I don’t know how to put into words how this holiday season has felt. Christmas has always been strong on family and tradition, from cookie recipes handed down, to ornaments on my tree that my mom hung as a child on her own mother’s tree.
Last year, we missed out on the holiday season due to catching COVID for the first time. We couldn’t get together with our families and just spent the day being pretty sick and miserable.
Then, in January, I lost my mom. And Love lost his in August. And now, it’s Christmas once again. But nothing is the same.
I couldn’t even decorate. There are none of the 60+ year old ornaments on my tree this year. I didn’t make cookies. I didn’t send cards. There’s no Christmas village or stockings hung. I just worked and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening because I couldn’t stop and think too hard about all that I was missing.
And now, it’s the very end of Christmas day. I’m sitting here on the couch, reflecting back on today and holidays past. I feel so much like I should say something or try to get out the swirl of feelings I’m overwhelmed with, but I just keep backspacing over what I write. It doesn’t say what I need it to say and it doesn’t come out in a coherent form. How do I sum up the first Christmas without my mom? How do I explain how pointless and empty it all feels? How everything is a hollow echo of what it should be?
I made it through the day but the day haunts me with it’s years of Christmas past. I think about how it feels like so long since I lost my mom and yet just moments ago at the same time. Hard to imagine that I’m circling in on almost a year already. A whole year of life spent she didn’t see, of places and events she wasn’t part of – and will never be again.
I worry Christmas will never be enjoyable again. And, maybe worse, it will be and that would be even worse still since it would feel wrong to be happy without her here. (Even though, yes, logically, I know my Mom would want me to be happy but it feels like a betrayal to be happy without her.)
All I know is that it’s just after midnight and now Dec 26th. I avoided crying on Christmas but only just. I miss her and I miss Christmas and I hate how hard this all is. I don’t know what more to say than that.