The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas always has been kind of a weird time. Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. I love the warmth, the union and the happiness that comes with it. It is a meal with the people you love for no other reason than to be thankful. I have heard some people make the argument that all meals should be entered with the same thought process and mindfulness that comes with Thanksgiving, which is a great idea in theory, but it just doesn’t always happen. Every moment I am just as thankful as I am on Thanksgiving, but during that day specifically, I can reflect on the building blocks of my life and properly dissect why I am thankful. Thanksgiving is warmth and love and togetherness.
Then you have this weird space of time leading to Christmas. Looking back the last week of November always seems like just an extension of Thanksgiving in that the warm fuzzies are still hanging on. Slowly the conversations that start with, ‘How was your Thanksgiving?’ come to a stop and the turkey and thankful decorations and posts disappear. Santas, wreaths and reindeer accumulate and the first week of December tip toes in and every conversation you have includes a statement about preparedness or lack there of for Christmas. Then seemingly suddenly, Christmas is next week, and conversations start to switch to often a more panicked lack of preparedness, talking about plans or travels and, specific to my work and many others, whether or not you have the holiday off. This is kind of where time is right now. Every one is gearing up and if I were to be active on my social media feed I imagine there are a hundred pictures of children with Santa…Christmas is just around the corner. We got dumped on with a ton of snow, people are bundled up, cheerful, it just feels like holiday time. Except I am Scrooge.
If Christmas could just not happen this year…that would be great. It has been a really, really bad last three weeks with zero signs of improvement on the horizon. Hopeless is one word, defeated is another, heartbroken encompasses a whole lot more. I have a terrible attitude and I have really given up caring about it all that much. I had a conversation just today about my ‘gas tank’. It is running on fumes. I am putting around barely able to get from point A to B so to add Christmas, which should be so exciting with a new born, makes me feel like I’d rather shut off the engine and just die. Dramatic? No. It isn’t. Because this holiday was not supposed to be this way. I had a million other thoughts and plans and hopes and dreams and zero of them included my daughter being dead. This is not fair. Babies are born every day. Everyone else that was pregnant with me has their baby. This is not fair.
Our Christmas tree is decorated with dove ornaments I have been collecting in the past couple weeks. I also had a little angel baby made with Sylvia’s name that is front and center of the tree. I bought some antique clear glass balls and have pine cones tucked in-between the branches. It is pretty but makes me sad to look at. I am dreading the holiday. Thinking of it makes me want to panic. This weird time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is like the worst anticipation ever, it feels like a build up to another death. Fear fills my throat, I feel heavy and light headed at the same time, my nose gets hot from anxiety and the tears start. I feel an emptiness that continues to get worse and worse. So if Christmas could just not happen this year…that would be great.
