Christmas Time of Year

This is the season "to be jolly," this is the season "to be merry," this is the season of "happy holidays." None of these apply this year because this is the "Christmas Time of Year" for the very first time in 38 years without Roy. It will never be the same "time of year," ever again in my life, our lives. I am mindful that it is also a time to "count your blessings," and I am glad of the many blessings I do have to "count," and I do count them again, as always, and especially so at this "Christmas Time of Year". A very wise friend wrote "I have no words to comfort you." I totally agree. -Jeanne

Getting through it

I was watching some stupid television program the other night and learned a lesson. It's one of those lessons I already learned or knew I'd learn eventually but had to be reminded of...apparently through a stupid television program. The program I was watching is about real life people, not actors, but it's not a reality television program. The program focuses on really poor, challenged neighborhoods around the country and one highlighted a neighborhood where there is a lot of gang violence. There is a church group there, where women who have lost loved ones to violence gather to talk, to listen, to grieve. One of the women had lost her 26 year old son 3 weeks earlier and had been unable to open up about it. She said something like this: "I'm afraid that if I open up about it, if I get through it, then it will mean it's real, and I'm so afraid of it being real."

I think I've been afraid of getting through this since it happened, as each day that passes moves me away from when Dad was alive. Getting through it (meaning it's no longer ok to sob in public at inappropriate times as it was when it first happened, you know, "ok" meaning normal) is an on-going process, one that doesn't have an end that would be classified as "getting over it." But getting through it is what we've all been doing, because we all lost him together, at once, in a finality that I despise. We get through it just because time passes and we still wake up each day. On the days I don't want to get out of bed it's mostly because I don't want time to quicken the distance between when Dad was alive and now.

I'm afraid to get through it and the holidays are another reminder that I will. The first time Dad's birthday passed without him, the first Thanksgiving, and the quickly-approaching first Christmas, are all going to pass and we're going to get through them. And that stinks.

-Aimee