I have fallen into a very dark place. Up to this point, as I have been healing, both from my own physical problems and from my grief, I have marked each month by remembering what I'd been doing with my mother the year before. But since Halloween, those memories have been of hospital visits, bad news, false hope and witnessing unthinkable suffering. Now, as the Christmas season is here, I am plunged into the anger, the disbelief and the gut-wrenching sorrow of the weeks before my mother died.
While all I want to do is to get on the floor and sob until I have nothing left, I am cleaning, shopping, planning meals, wrapping gifts and being present to my family. Christmas is going to come whether I want it to or not. My daughter is only eight. I don't want to ruin her Christmas. I really don't. She feels my mother's loss. I don't want to make her feel worse about that. So I am going to go through the motions and try to be a happy elf.
I'm not only mourning my mother, though. This year is the first year that I will not have all of my children with me. My middle son, who has made awful choices for his life, is no longer in mine. He will not be spending Christmas with me. He called me a few days before Thanksgiving. I prayed before I read his text message that it was going to say that he really wanted to come home for Thanksgiving, that he missed his family, that he was going to try to straighten out his life. It was a tirade about what he believed was his well-deserved inheritance from my mother. Later, I hoped that he would be home for Christmas. He and I and his siblings have never been apart for Christmas: hot cider, toffee cookies, family games, dinner, and laughing all day, these are our Christmas Day traditions. I had his brother find out what he was planning. It was not to come home. I may never recover from how hurt I am.
I believe in God and the intercession of Saints. I just don't believe in their concern for me.
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