Our eldest got to experience Christmas Day festivities like the ones Rod and I had growing up exactly once. When he was just over one year old, we moved halfway across the country. We had no family here; we had no one expecting us, no place we had to be on Christmas Day. That first Christmas away from our families was quite a shock for us. We had only been in Texas six months; I was terribly homesick - and six months pregnant. Christmas Day went from a traditionally busy day that started early and ended late to basically just another day off work - but with presents. After opening said presents, we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. We had nothing to inform us what Christmas would look like outside of our previous experience. We realized that we had a blank slate for our family Christmas. We took that blank slate and slowly began to build our own Christmas traditions. We added things (including two more children) until we had built a whole family ritual that began on Christmas Eve. We started with opening one present (pajamas for all the pics that would be snapped the next morning), then drove around town (in said pajamas) driving around to look at lights, finishing up with a cup of hot cocoa before going to bed once they were old enough to not have fallen asleep in the car by the time we got home. Then Rod and I would begin a gift-wrapping extravaganza that lasted into the wee hours. Christmas morning began with orange danishes, opening presents, spending time playing with all our new stuff, then our annual honeybaked ham in the evening for dinner. We stayed in our pajamas all day, and didn't rush through any part of it - except for maybe breakfast. As the kids grew, our family traditions expanded beyond Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They included everyone helping put up and decorate the tree (but always after my December birthday!) and picking a day to go to Santa’s Village. Later there were school parties and Sunday School parties, and a growing collection of Christmas movies we’d watch throughout the month. The list goes on. This became a whole Christmas season, up to and including Christmas Day. Everything about it was unique to us, separate from any Christmas experiences Rod and I had previously known. It was when the two oldest (both boys) flew the nest that our traditions necessarily began to change. We’d long outgrown some of the traditions, and for other December activities proximity and scheduling became a bit of a challenge. We planned a time to open presents together, but it would be on Christmas Eve so they could begin to create Christmas morning traditions of their own. But I gotta tell ya, that first Christmas morning with just me, Rod, and our youngest was reminiscent of our first Christmas in Texas - it was a bit of a shock! Having done all the Christmas Day activities on Christmas Eve, the big day itself was somewhat of a let down for the three of us. We figured out pretty quick that, going forward, we needed to save our gifts between the three of us to open on Christmas morning! After that first Christmas morning, we began to rethink our Christmas Day. What would it look like for the three of us? And, ultimately, what would it look like for just Rod and me? Once again, we had a blank slate, and the opportunity to rebuild the holidays with new traditions.
What happens now? Do we do what we’ve always done, just without him? Do we proceed with the still-forming traditions as though he were still here? Do we skip the whole thing and hide under a rock (or under the covers) until the holidays are over? So many questions and no clear answers. Definitely none that I liked. In the past, when faced with a blank slate, at least we had a slate to write on. And we had each other to build and share our future with. This time, I didn’t have any of that - not even a slate. My daughter, who was home from college when I returned from my trip to Israel, and I decided to go ahead and put up the tree. Maybe it was for my son’s kids, maybe it was because that's what you’re supposed to do at Christmas. Having made the decision, we went out to the garage to get out the artificial tree we’d used for decades and all its trimmings. I opened the garage door, looked at the boxes from across the double garage, stood frozen in tearful silence for a moment, then backed out and closed the door. Nope. That wasn’t going to happen. We decided to get a real tree instead. We’ve never had a real tree, so this was way out of our ballpark. But we’ve never had a Christmas without Rod either, so we were already out there. We thought doing something completely different would be …. we didn’t know what it would be. But we did know we couldn’t do things the same. We celebrated Christmas with the boys and their families on New Year’s Day, so Christmas Day it was just me and my daughter. We decided that if Rod were here, we would have gone to see a movie like we had done for the last two years, so she and I went and saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. That Christmas Day came only 33 days after Rod died, so I don’t remember much else of Christmas that first one without him. By the next Christmas, I had moved into a new (to me) house. Because the actual first Christmas was so tangled with grief, this Christmas felt like it was the first one without Rod. My memories of that Christmas are fuzzy, too, like a dream. By 2015, I was ready to get back in the game - or at least I had the wherewithal to make the effort. I made gifts for the kids and grands from Rod’s old jeans and t-shirts. The kids and grands all came to my house for Christmas; it seemed a little less heavy, and even a little bit … normal. (I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but pretty sure I didn’t like it.) We were able to talk about past Christmases we spent with Rod, and there was laughter along with the tears. But I experienced something new at that family gathering that is still difficult now. When we’re all together, that’s when it is the most apparent that we’re not all together. You know how when someone steps out of the room for a minute to get something from the car or go to the bathroom, but you know they’re coming back, and there’s a space where they were but no one fills it because they are coming right back? And no one mentions it because everyone understands that they’re coming right back? It’s kind of like that. Only he isn’t coming right back. And it isn’t a physical space; it’s a space that no one will fill because it was his space; a space filled with the silence of what might have been. I wish I could outline all the new traditions that have developed since those early Christmases, but the truth is there aren’t any, really. I’ve taken it year by year, making choices each Christmas season based on preference or convenience or circumstance. I still feel a little lost this time of year, but it’s more like I’m floating wistfully on the winds of opportunity rather than plunging into an abyss.
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