Blue Christmas
Facing the holiday season has been hard for many reasons, but also because I love Christmas. Lights, decorations, gifts, baking, parties, cards, cooking, charity, church: Christmas has always been my favorite season. Even so, one year when our three kids were young, I bought a book entitled “Stop the Christmas Machine” because with school-age children to delight, the holiday preparations were feeling overwhelming. The gist of the book was that one needs to concentrate on only those things that one finds most important and leave the rest go. But when I went through my list of things to do, there wasn’t anything I wanted to give up. I couldn’t imagine Christmas without each and every one of its parts.
My first task is to put electric candles in each window of the house. During this season of darkness, I love the welcoming feeling of lights shining from the windows of home. After the candles are up, Ken and I would string lights along the driveway and around the front porch and side door, sometimes on a tree or two or around the garden fence if we were feeling ambitious, hoping to brighten the spirits of everyone who drives by.
Then all the bins get pulled down from the attic, full of tree ornaments and decorations and their associated memories. We always get a live tree, sometimes precut if life had been particularly crazy that year but usually we went to a tree farm to cut one down. When we would find a candidate, Ken would stand next to it and raise his arm over his head as a rough measure of height. He knew that was about the limit of what would fit in our living room once the angel was on top.
As much as I love to give gifts, I do not love shopping at this time of year. The stores are too crowded and noisy for me, so I tend to procrastinate this task. That meant Ken and I were typically in a frenzy of gift wrapping on Christmas Eve as we finished Santa’s business before the kids woke up or guests arrived the next day.
I love to bake cookies and Ken loved to eat them: the cut outs like my mother made, and ginger snaps and snickerdoodles, fancy meringues and filled cookies, toffee and shortbread. Right after Thanksgiving, his most common question was “When are you going to start baking?”
Over the years we’ve planned holiday dinners and parties for our colleagues and friends since hospitality always seemed like the perfect way to show gratitude for our business relationships and friendships. For as quiet as Ken could be, he loved hosting parties and making sure everyone was laughing and had enough to eat and drink.
We also liked to stay connected with friends by sending Christmas cards. My mother always writes an individual note in each card, a practice I mimicked until one year I started including a newsletter instead, to save some time in bringing everyone up to speed on our lives.
And it wouldn’t be Christmas without the food: for us this meant a simple meal Christmas Eve followed by some snacks after church, usually Ken’s great grandmother’s anise buns for Christmas breakfast and then a feast later in the day.
There are always extra tasks at the end of year to help out the less fortunate. Gift buying and food bank donations, maybe an event or two to lend a helping hand: it never felt like Christmas until we had helped some members of our larger community.
Lastly, Christmas Eve at church is my favorite service of the year. I knew that no matter how much work remained undone at home, or whatever else was going on in our lives, I would always feel a complete suspension of worry seeing everyone’s faces aglow, singing in the candle light “All is calm, all is bright”.
And that was our Christmas for so many years.
Ken was diagnosed with bile duct cancer in January of 2019. He endured major abdominal surgery to remove the tumor in March and finished the first round of chemotherapy in November. His post-treatment scans were clear, so Christmas that year would’ve been pretty normal except we were in the middle of a kitchen remodel. Without a range, I wasn’t able to bake cookies and with only a bathroom sink for doing dishes, we wouldn’t be throwing a party either. Even so, we cobbled together Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas breakfast with a gas grill and a toaster oven, and went to my parent’s house for the main meal. We didn’t realize at the time that what seemed like a ridiculous inconvenience would barely compare to the disruption of the next three Christmases.
In 2020, Ken was feeling good but we didn’t want to risk giving him COVID, so we sat out on my parents’ porch with my sisters at dusk on Christmas Eve, bundled up against a cold heavy mist in a stiff wind, huddled around a propane heater to share some drinks and hors d’oeuvres. “It doesn’t even seem like Christmas” said my father. Ken and I went home to watch church via the live stream and had a Zoom call with some friends afterward. Our kids came the next day, and we sat outside around a campfire to open gifts. Christmas dinner that year was our first ever December picnic. Even my daughter’s dog, who normally loves to run around our yard, curled up into some dry ornamental grass in an attempt to warm up, wondering why we were outside on this cold winter day.
By Christmas 2021, the cancer had returned and Ken had been through a second surgery, was in the second month of a harsher round of chemotherapy, and needed biliary drains to keep him alive. The drains frequently clogged, and we were down in Philadelphia on December 23 getting them replaced, when complications from the procedure almost got him admitted to an in-patient unit. Luckily, he responded to some minor interventions and was able to go home that day, although for a few hours it looked like we would be spending Christmas at the hospital. By this time, we had been vaccinated against COVID and there were home testing kits to make sure our visitors weren’t spreading the virus, but the holiday was still subdued compared to normal years.
In the summer of 2022, the cancer metastasized into his peritoneum, and the number of medical interventions ballooned. So last year’s Christmas was a little sparse since managing Ken’s needs filled most of our waking hours. In the week and a half before Christmas he had a four hour chemotherapy infusion, two paracentesis, a home nurse visitation as well as a drain exchange and a blood transfusion so we knew that it was going to be another quiet celebration. He was very weak, but still insisted on helping me hang some outdoor lights, and accompanied one of our sons to pick out a tree from a nearby farm. With the threat of COVID lower but his immune system stressed from the third round of chemotherapy, we declined an invitation to a holiday party but decided we could risk Christmas Eve at church as long as we wore masks. “I feel like a rock star” Ken said afterward, as he was able to greet and acknowledge so many members of our church family that he had been isolated from for the last three years.
So to say the least, between cancer and COVID, our last few Christmases have been non-traditional. This year, I’d be satisfied with one of those weird Christmases, if only Ken was still here. Because none of the preparations make it seem like Christmas as much as having the people we love around us.
I did manage to get the window candles up and they make the house a little brighter when I get home at night. A recent weekend the warm temperatures and a burst of ambition found me outside hanging strings of lights on the porch and the driveway wall, although they look a little uneven and are obviously missing the order and care of Ken’s precision measuring.
My sister-in-law painted one of those lighted ceramic trees for Ken after he moved away from his childhood home, and that little tree has been a part of every Christmas since I met him. It is one of the only decorations I bothered to bring down from the attic, but it is such a reminder of them both, I tear up whenever I look at it.
I don’t think I can bear going to the tree farm without him, and anyway he’s not here to tie off the tree with fishing line so the cats don’t knock it down.
If I venture out to shop, I will hear Mariah Carey singing All I Want for Christmas Is You. And instead of finding the song slightly annoying, I will probably start to cry.
I haven’t baked a cookie because I will miss him walking into the kitchen saying “smells good in here” and looking for some samples to taste test.
It’s too much to plan and execute a gathering without him, and who really wants to be at a party with someone who is taking the Merry out of Christmas?
I found black and white Christmas cards with a bland message of “Greetings of the Season” to reflect my somber mood. But how will I write the newsletter without his editing?
Grocery shopping for all the food means I need to smile weakly at the cashier when they end the transaction with “Merry Christmas!” or “Happy Holidays!" and resist the urge to say “probably not”. Anyway the kids and I have reservations to go out for our meal, just to avoid Ken’s empty seat at our family table.
The soap I bought for a church charity drive this year is still sitting on the kitchen counter, a victim of my unreliable memory. And I feel a little too empty to volunteer.
Even attending church is hard, since I can see recognition of my loss in the knowing looks of the caring members of my congregation.
Driving through each town and neighborhood I see Christmas displays everywhere. I hear Christmas music at the gym, the doctor’s office, in restaurants, and sit through all of the holiday commercials when I watch TV. So it looks like Christmas and it sounds like Christmas but like my dad said in 2020, “it doesn’t even seem like Christmas”. Real life continues for the majority of the world, while I wonder how it is possible that something as dependable as Christmas seems vacant and sad.
Even though I’ve been grieving for almost ten months, the last few weeks have been more consistently difficult…I’ve been feeling more isolated and am more prone to tears. I’m not sure if this is because I am actually sadder or because everyone else seems happier. Either way, it is not how I am accustomed to feeling at this time of year. Because typically, no matter how busy I am, there is joy and excitement and goodwill in the anticipation. This year, there is mostly dread in the anticipation, because every preparation emphasizes Ken’s absence. There are so many other feelings bubbling up too: sadness mostly, but also abandonment, loneliness, apprehension, a little bit of jealousy. And since some days I still can’t even believe he is gone, I am simply not ready for joy. Don’t get me wrong, if something gives me a moment of happiness or laughter, I take it. But I can’t force it. The grief is just so much bigger than the happiness that Christmas can bring.
Whether we are missing a spouse, a child, a parent, sibling or grandparent, a good friend or a beloved pet, how can we cope with the holiday season? There is no way around that it’s going to be hard, so what can we do to make it a little easier on ourselves? Just like any Christmas, I’ve made a List of Things to Do, so that I don’t neglect something important.
First on the list is to remember that grief is physically exhausting. Some mornings as I am climbing out of bed, I am already looking forward to when I can climb back in at the end of the day. It is overwhelming to think about the work of Christmas when I am already fatigued by day to day life. This year I need to decide what is most important to me and the kids and limit myself to only a few traditions. And if I need help with something, like chopping down a tree, I will ask for it.
Second, while it is important to feel whatever emotions I have, between those feelings and the sensory overload from Christmas, I could use a break from it all. So I’m going to spend some time distracting myself, and give my heart and my brain a chance to focus on something else. A creative activity would work, maybe writing poetry, drawing or painting, some needlecraft, or woodworking. Exercise is an option too. In fact, it is a good time of year to get outside for a brisk walk, and see evidence that the earth is tired and resting too, that there is a season where it is completely normal to not be lively or bright. Ken’s favorite pastime was fishing. He enjoyed it even when the fish weren’t biting, because he said that sitting by the water was his meditation. I won’t go fishing without him, but I’ll hopefully find an activity that gives me this level of serenity.
Last on the list, is to remember to talk about our loved ones and find a way to include them in our holiday. When I socialize, I try to hold back from discussing Ken because usually this will make me cry, and no one wants to hang around someone who is crying. But I won’t get through this holiday by ignoring him either. Ken loved a good fire so maybe for Christmas the kids and I will write some messages of our love for him and use the papers to feed that fire. Or maybe we will all sit around wearing some of his favorite t-shirts and exchange stories of the person we loved. His great-grandmother’s anise buns are a day’s work, but maybe I will make them anyway, since Ken loved them so much.
Please remember to take care of yourself in the coming days, and think about how you can keep your loved one in Christmas.
Peace be with you friends.