Christmas

I don’t know what I expected it to be. 

Maybe I did. 

Maybe I thought everything about this season would feel nauseating. Maybe I thought I would feel angry and robbed to sense others' anticipation and happiness as they celebrated with family. Maybe I thought I wouldn’t be able to stop weeping. Maybe I thought all those things could be true, but it was not like that. But it wasn't easy either. 

I have cried deeply, honestly, everyday. 

I delayed decorations and avoided celebrations as long as I could.

I stayed in bed for two days last week when everything felt too heavy and hard to do. 

We didn’t get our tree until the 22nd.

No gifts until the 23rd.

Didn’t wrap a thing until the 24th.

Instead of a long, dreadful walk through garish, manufactured, sugarplum happiness,

Christmas came almost like a shot at the doctor’s office you didn’t see coming. It’s here.

You're doing it. It’s done before you can even get yourself too worked up. 

So no matter what I thought it might be, the miracle has been that Christmas was actually beautiful. Both my brother, sister and all their respective families came. Our other “sons,” Benjamin and Owen played a part. They tumbled into our achy little world and filled my Mom and Dad’s house with energy, joy, and enfolded those of us in the epicenter of loss with love. We were gifted nourishing, delicious food and wonderful conversation while we watched all the kids in their rosy cheeked bliss. We napped and played games and just held each other in grace. We didn’t have to push too hard or make anything happen. They just offered and we received. It was what we could do and somehow they knew it. 

And Jonah was there. Christian and I gave everyone a small icon of Jonah as well as shared some of his sweatshirts, hats, and jackets so everyone might have something of his. We all wrote and filled his stocking with letters and talked about him like he was sitting in the room. I think he was. 

So, it was good. But it wasn’t the same. I wonder if any of it will ever feel as good again,

or if this explosion knocked our world off its axis so much we left the orbit.

Like looking through a window nostalgically at something from a simpler time, but not really something for you anymore. Like going through the motions of a dance you know, but cannot quite hear the music.

I just don’t know yet. 

I read something somewhere recently that resonated with me, though. It was something like, your hands stop shaking when you are using them to help others. That is so beautiful. And maybe the same is true for the heart. When you remember the love and gratitude you have for your people, the hurt subsides. Or at least you feel something more than hurt. The hardest part of grief can be how isolating it is. You become so centered on your experience of pain and loss that the only thing you can see, feel, think about is your own sadness. And that might be necessary. You can’t pretend the depth of your sadness isn’t true and singular. Nobody can actually understand the fullness your grief comprises. But you also should remember that’s not ALL your heart can hold. This Christmas was beautiful because sorrow and love mingled, for all of us, and we held it together. We served each other. We took turns carrying the load for each other. 

I have had the thought that my life right now feels a little like crowd surfing. I just take a step, falling forward, and somehow all these people are here, all these raised hands, unexpectedly holding my weight, lifting me up higher and higher, closer to the light. Somehow I am defying gravity, but not by my own effort. 

And so, our people raised us high. And that is why it was a beautiful Christmas.