Christmas

Yesterday was weepy. All day long I was biting back tears. The coworker and friend who had picked me up off the floor and walked me back to my classroom when I first heard the news brought me cookies, some of my students brought me presents, but all day I just wanted to cry. About 1:30, during my planning period, the chorus teacher brought his class around to my room and they sang carols outside my door. I walked out and sang along, harmonizing – the way Mom taught me – with one of my particularly special students. Then they started singing Carol of the Bells, and something about that song is so moving anyway. My eyes filled up, and couldn’t sing anymore. I just wanted to share Christmas one more time with my mom, and the reality of the season without her was too much.

There is no joy this Christmas. I haven’t put up any decorations, and I don’t have any desire to. I haven’t wrapped the first gift. I have bought a few, and I must wrap some of them. But I can’t make myself do it. I am completely unmotivated. I talked with another friend who lost her mother this year and she is having a similar experience, although she is also empty nesting, which is making it even worse. She has put up her tree, out of necessity for an event having to do with her husband’s work, but she hasn’t been able to decorate it beyond putting lights on it.

Driving down the street, seeing the lights on other houses and the Christmas trees brightly lit behind the windows, it all just makes me sad. I know that’s wrong, because Christ lived, died and lives again, so there is hope for me, that I will see my mom again, that death is not the end of our relationship. Perhaps, as some believe, my relationship with her will not be the same as it was during this life within the confines of time, but at least I know she is Somewhere, that she didn’t cease to exist. One day we will be together again There. But for now there is no joy, and the fact that I can’t even find joy in knowing that He lives, therefore we live, only serves to make me more broken.  I just want to forget everything, and the specialness of this season sharpens the pain. I am afraid of what Christmas will be for me from now on: a reminder of the one who isn’t here with me.