Christmas In The Raw.
Does it feel like Christmas to you yet?
And what in the world does feeling like Christmas even mean?
Does it mean snow or presents wrapped and ready or baking in the kitchen?
I don’t know.
Here’s what I know –
I’m in a bit of a holiday slump.
For years I watched my father kind of ebb and flow during the holidays.
He was never the primary shopper or planner of gifts – but that seemed pretty normal to me. He isn’t a Christmas-carol-singing kind of man. On a dairy farm days ran to a consistent routine and cows had to be milked Christmas Eve and Christmas morning too.
But Dad’s jolliest self didn’t surface on Christmas day. Oh – don’t read me wrong – he was pleasant and content and kind. But he wasn’t always enthusiastic. Mom once explained to me a piece of the why behind all that. My father’s dad passed away near Christmas. My mother’s father passed away near Christmas. It was a lot of memory and pushed aside thoughts and the settling of years on years.
As a kid, of course, the explanation was sufficient but lacked any realism in my world. I just got a Glamour Gal Cruise Boat – who wouldn’t be happy?
But here on this other side – this grown-up side – I see what some days found my dad quietly resting on our old striped This End Up furniture with his blue sock hat on, a sort of wistful expression settling beneath his bushy beard.
It’s the Christmases before.
And the Christmases now.
And the Christmases next year.
You know I never wanted my mother to pass away – but I seriously prayed that she wouldn’t pass away near Christmas.
But there it was anyway. December 4th. Too close. Still the holiday month.
It felt like Too Much on top of Too Much.
It still does sometimes.
And as long as you live, I think a holiday without a mother is just …… a different sort of beast.
I wonder sometimes why the weight of loss feels heavier from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
I think it’s the familiar. The tradition. The calling to go home.
It’s the weight of the Christmas morning my little brother surprised my mother with a fully restored hand-caned chair that she had left in the basement for years, wishing for its repair but not making it a priority. The tradition of Kevin’s mother always buying Christmas presents for our dogs as well as our kids. It’s the empty-handedness of beginning new traditions that our mothers will never see and continuing old ones that we can never share again with these women who carried us in their wombs and stroked our sick heads and shoved us out the door to all the Nexts in our lives.
I’m not bitter. But I’m sad.
My Christmas is far from tragic. Goodness – it’s impossible not to revel in the glory that is the holiday season with the incredible little band of humans living in our chaotic and gloriously loud home. It’s a marvel to be their momma and to make magic happen all month long.
But amid all the merry making and the gingerbread house eating, you should probably know that there are tender hearts beating to the rhythm of loss and sorrow.
Christmas is beautiful and redemptive and difficult and lovely.
So I guess, yes, it does feel like Christmas a bit.
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9 Comments
Lana
We have lost both of my in-laws and they both went so quickly and unexpectedly. I still have both of my parents but I now know that they could go just as quickly as my in-laws. The hard thing about my in-laws both being gone is there is a huge hole on my husband’s side of the family. There is no home to go to and nothing left to bind the four kids together. My husband had a heart attack in January of this year and there was no parent to call and say that it had happened but he had by God’a grace survived. So this year we will celebrate Christmas with our all adult children on Saturday and then head to Florida to be with my parents for Christmas because we now know that this one could be the last with them both or that we have few years left. It is so hard to watch them get so old. It is hard to go there to visit and see that they shuffle now or that my Mom did laundry in a dark laundry room for months because they could not get up on a chair or ladder to replace the light bulb. Hugs. We know how you hurt.
laceykeigley
To be the last grown up in a family is a bizarre spot to land. To have no one waiting on the other end of the phone line for big messages is alarming and disconcerting for sure.
I am so glad you guys are willing to make the drive and are able to cherish and love on your parents – and it hurts my heart to think of a momma unable to change that light bulb.
I hope you have a safe and joyous holiday with them.
Sara
Last night I read a newspaper article by a high school sophomore. A quote- ” Christmas is such a happy time of year… I mean, everyone is happy at Christmas.” And I thought-with a little melancholy-she is so very young and there was a time I felt the same.
Christmas reminds us of our losses, reinforces the fact that our families are dysfunctional, and reiterates the truth that our world is riddled with pain.
And yet, what a blessing to know absolutely that there is hope. That there are good tidings of great joy. That my soul can be still because The Lord is on my side.
For all those of you out there who are grieving the deaths of parents-especially moms-this Christmas, know that you are loved. I pray for peace and even a measure of joy.
laceykeigley
Nothing makes me feel so old as reading the words of hopeful youth. 🙂
And – my word Sara – you just wrote a beautiful blog post in this comment alone. Your words are spot on – true and wise and well-lived.
Can I just say again – how grateful I am to a world that allows this silly internet to bring us together in such an encouraging format? I am so glad you decided to read here and comment – it’s a lovely connection to me to be reunited with you in this manner.
karen
both of your comments and words and truth and wisdom make me so very happy. the older i get, the more i realize how important and cherished are the friendships that began so long ago that it seems a different life time. those friendships that have changed and grown and changed more. the people who have lived close and then far. the friends you may see once a year, if that. new friends are wonderful. but there’s something about a friend who has lived a lifetime with you. love you both!
judy kay
Yes. It’s been two years since my mom died unexpectedly right before Thanksgiving. That first year of holidays remains a bit of a blur. The next year, the sadness was still pretty painful and acute. But in this year I’ve settled into the missing. The sharpness of it has dulled, but it’s been replaced by something almost harder to bear: the, while-I’m-here-on-earth-we’ll-never-again… dull missing. Just yesterday I took one of my littlest ones on his Christmas shopping date. They get a dollar for each member of our family and they get to wander through the aisles of the dollar store selecting gifts. It was my mom’s favorite part of every Christmas morning she spent with us: seeing the precious thought those little ones had put into their selections or laughing over the complete randomness. I was a little teary walking those Dollar Tree aisles (and again just thinking about it). And yet, this season is the most constant reminder of hope and joy of the whole year. It’s a strange combination, the missing and sadness and then the joyful, hopeful gratitude. Christmas is beautiful and redemptive and difficult and lovely. I think I know that now better than I ever have before, and it makes me all the more grateful for what that holy little baby came to do.
laceykeigley
“settled into the missing”
I know precisely and definitively what you mean.
“Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. It needs not a map but a history ….” (C.S. Lewis)
You are right – it is such a strange combination – and it’s not one I really want to avoid – but one I want to wade through – whatever the cost – in my desire to honor my mother’s memory and to give a piece of who she was to my own children.
You’re right on so many levels – what a gift of hope CHristmas really is.
I truly love your heart and your joy in raising your own little band.
Chelsea
I’ve been feeling that a bit this year. Christmas Day last year found me making an unexpected trip with the kids to the hospital to see my mom. It was the beginning of a very tumultuous time in which we came very close to losing her. We celebrated Christmas two months late with my family because it was the first opportunity we had to be together. So this year Christmas brings a heaviness with it. Of course there is joy and such thankfulness that we got to keep her another year, but there is also the weight of we almost didn’t and one day we won’t. The glimpse of a harsh reality that felt all too close and was all too scary. The realization that I saw my parents visibly age this year and eventually they will stop that process.
I have two close friends that have lost a parent figure this month already. Death during the holiday season seems to have an extra sting, to carry a smidge of unfairness with it.
Honestly, that’s how I feel about you guys having lost both your mothers so young. That is unfair and it just makes me sad.
So Christmas finds me sad and rejoicing, often at once because the sadness is what spurs me to appreciate the ones I have to enjoy and the memories I have to treasure.
laceykeigley
I can’t believe that was all an entire year ago for you.
The visible aging – it’s so tender and heart breaking, isn’t it?
“A smidge of unfairness”. That’s the sting for me. It’s the pity party I really long to have for myself. (And sometimes do.) But I am frequently given painful opportunity to be reminded by God’s kindness that my own personal selfish version of “fairness” is not what I actually desire.
I know you carry a weight for my heart in this matter – and I think that is so lovely and generous. Thank you friend.