Dear Nora,
This holiday season has been anything but simple. Starting with Halloween, moving all the way through Christmas, and looking forward into the new year. Each new holiday has brought its own set of mental obstacles. It’s a really strange thing to be a bereaved parent during this time of year. It feels like for every high there is an equal and very present low. There’s always a reminder, a nudge, a feeling pulling me back to the reality that even though there is light we are still also living in a shadow.
Halloween is always so much fun to plan and execute. I remember last year as Halloween neared, before your diagnosis, making a list (who would have thought right, me, make a list?!) of family costume ideas for this year. Last year for Halloween we had dear friends come to our house and celebrate with a themed breakfast-for-dinner feast and indoor trick-or-treating. We had just finally been able to have another family in our home again in Germany and we were excited to get together and have some modified Halloween fun. Still, while planning that, I was looking forward to this year and hoping we’d all get to experience door to door trick-or-treating together. Because Ellie had been so small for her first Halloween, we didn’t do it, we had only dressed up and handed out candy together in DC. Rose’s first Halloween, we went to a party at a friend’s house in Germany and Ellie did in home trick-or-treating there in between busting out her favorite moves for all her admirers and chasing their cat. Rose’s second and Ellie’s third was last year, so this would have been all three of your first times going trick or treating for real. Your dad had previously been scheduled to be gone during the fall and winter so I’d been trying to come up with fun ideas the four of us girls could do. So when Halloween rolled around and we were planning our costumes, there was the list. It was heartbreaking to think back to a time when we thought the dreams we had were guaranteed to become reality. We let your sisters choose the costume theme and they went with Peter Pan even though they’d never seen the movie or read the book. Ellie saw a picture of Wendy’s dress and couldn’t see herself dressing up as anything or anyone else. Rose was tinker bell and your dad and I were the raccoon lost boys. We did all the holiday things including heading to the pumpkin patch and carving jack-o-lanterns. For the big day, we went to Aunt Kim and Uncle Bob’s and did door to door trick-or-treating. It was so much fun watching your sisters as they got excited for each new house and every single piece of candy. Ellie was over the moon about her costume as was Rose about my tail. It was so lovely, even more so because your dad was home with us. Still, there were moments among the joy that were just pure sadness. Moments that reminded me that you were missing and our dream from last year was still shattered.
Thanksgiving was different this year as well, but it was so nice to be with people again, to gather with family. We went to our cousin’s house and everyone had a great evening. Minus the part where your sisters refused to go to sleep for what felt like eternity because they were just having entirely too much fun. Yet there I was again, missing you. I cried at the dinner table when I tried to eloquently and simply explain what I was thankful for this year. I could barely finish and I felt so embarrassed. Just for the record, this year I was most thankful for the lessons we learned about what is truly important in this life, even though they were very difficult and painful lessons to learn. That and of course our family, which just so happens to be the most important thing in life. All of that learned or remembered because of loving and losing you.
Christmas is now fast approaching and you can still find me here in this strange bit of the universe where bliss and despair blend together to paint a painfully beautiful picture. The day we chose and cut down our tree was a really great day (aside from that part where your sisters both chased your dad down a rocky, muddy hill and required both bandages and a change of clothes). We got a late breakfast at one of our favorite places. Your sisters basically just ate sugar with a side of sugar and loved it. I mean, who wouldn’t?! Then we ran some errands and finally made our way to the tree farm. We went through three fields before deciding on the perfect tree. Your sisters, clever as they are, carried rather large stones with them through the entire experience to place at the stump of the tree in true Lorax fashion. Both fell asleep on the way home, Ellie with her candy cane still held tightly in her hand. We decorated what was unpacked of the house and put the tree up inside. Several days later when we finally made time to actually decorate the tree together, it was yet another bittersweet family moment. We were trying to soak it all up knowing your dad will be gone next year and overall it was a time filled with lots of joy, laughter and eyes full of wonder. Still I couldn’t help but tear up when I thought of you and probed the emptiness that follows us. The thought of the curiosity that would’ve been found in your eyes and the battles to keep you from pulling the tree down on yourself tugged at my heart. Watching your sisters squeal with delight over the train and imagining how you would’ve been trying to squeeze right in next to them broke it.
Traveling with two toddlers who are both in an “I only want Mommy” phase is a tough spot to be in. It was exciting to get on a plane again, now being a year after our return from Germany. Though the entire trip from home and through the airport I felt as though we were forgetting something, like something was missing. I ran through the checklist in my head- things for the girls to do, snacks, extra clothes, bunnies, clothes, toiletries, gifts, stockings… all of it. Somehow there was still an absence. Though you’re always with us, we’re still always without you. It’s an interesting feeling being stuck between joy and sadness. Such is the juxtaposition of the life of a bereaved parent any time of the year and to be honest, it sucks.
Moving into the new year I felt grumpy and irritable. It took years for the holiday to feel like something to celebrate again after my dad took his own life on New Years Day when I was 15. However, for at least the last 10 years, it had once again been something to celebrate. This year felt different. When I really explored my feelings, I was a little surprised. I was happy to be rid of 2021, there’s no question there. In this year alone, we’d lost you, lost another baby, made the stressful decision to move, family members fell ill with COVID, I began experiencing unexplainable neurological and muscular issues, both of your sisters got RSV, we were being sued over a ridiculous car accident, we had three total ED visits for the year, and Rose made it just under the wire to get the award for first family stitches on the 30th of December. I was done. I was ready for a fresh start. I was also afraid to leave it behind. When I really thought about it, dug deep and explored the complex feelings I was having and expressing… I was just sad. 2021 is the only year we will have ever truly had you and I wasn’t ready to move away from that. Maybe I’m still not ready to admit that the way things happened is reality, but the truth is that I can’t run or hide or wish it away and 2022 will bring just as many complex moments and emotions, the first full year without you, as well some sort fresh start.
No matter what year it is, you will always be with us and we will always be without you. Such is our new beautifully dejected juxtaposition.
Love,
Mommy
Originally written to Nora over a series of days through the holidays.
Dear Nora 