Reflections

Tomorrow marks my first anniversary as a WiDeaux.  December was a pretty dismal month for me, but you know that saying “it’s always darkest before the dawn?”  It’s true.  Over the weekend, I had a lot of time for reflection. 

I realized that I’ve gone through an entire year of first occasions, holidays, birthdays—and just days--without Bunny, and I’ve survived.  I’m so grateful for the love and support that I’ve received throughout the past year from my friends and loved ones.  Even the smallest gesture can make all the difference to someone who's having a bad day.

Not that the past year has been easy—it hasn’t been.   There were days when I didn’t want to get out of bed, when I didn’t see how I could face another day without Bunny.   For months after he died, my short-term memory was nonexistent.   I—the person who hates making lists—now make them frequently, just to be on the safe side.   The memories—both good and bad—have ambushed me, unprovoked.  I’ll always miss Bunny, but I’m tired of dwelling on what might have been.  It’s time to focus on and be grateful for what we had, but to leave the past behind.

It’s been a year of contradictions.  I’ve learned that I’m both stronger and weaker than I thought I was.  I’ve seen the best and the worst in people I love.  I’ve made new friends and lost old ones. I’ve felt like half of me was missing but strangely tranquil in my oneness.   I’ve done things I never would have done before last year.  For example, I won the 2012 Ladies’ Beer Drinking Contest at the Cochon de Lait festival, just because my cousin and step-father dared me to enter (see Country Comfort, 5/17/12 for the whole story).

To quote another Elton John song, after an extremely difficult year, I’m Still Standing.  Now that I’ve spent a year surviving, 2013 will be the year I thrive.

Rosalie's Gift to the Anti-Magi

December has been a very emotionally difficult month for me.   Even under normal circumstances, Christmas has never been my happiest time—the dark winter days, the crushes of people everywhere, the incessant, crappy/sappy Christmas music, and the generally increased noise level make me crazy.  I know—I sound like The Grinch.  Maybe that’s why he’s my favorite Christmas cartoon character.

This year, though, in addition to all the above stressors, every single Christmas-related thing I see reminds me that either: 1) my husband is no longer here; 2) my mother is no longer here; or 3) neither my husband nor my mother is here.  Lights?  Bunny loved them.  Angels? My mother collected them.  You see how it goes.  I don’t set out to make these mental connections—they come, unbidden, before I can stop them. 

I’m sure it doesn’t help that the first anniversaries of their deaths are just around the corner.  Even if I’d been able to get past the stockings, there’s no way I could have put up a tree.  I don’t know about your ornaments, but I can tell the story behind every one of mine, and nearly every one of those stories involves my husband or my mother.

So, I’ve stayed away from malls.  On the few trips I’ve made to Walmart and Target in the last month, I’ve left crying like a baby.  Not only do the trappings of Christmas spark these flashbacks, but seeing people shopping with their spouses or mothers, happily arguing about what presents they’re buying, or what they’re cooking, or where they’re going remind me of the suddenly empty spots in my own family.   Then I feel guilty for being such a whiner, because I’m so blessed compared to others, like the families of the shooting victims in Connecticut.  Then I feel sad for the people I feel guilty about.  It’s a vicious, emotionally exhausting cycle.

After these incidents, I retreat back to my Christmas-decoration-free nest to regain my emotional balance.   Celebrating Hanukah rather than Christmas this year was one of the smartest things I ever did.  The cats and I liked Hanukah so much that we’re going to celebrate both holidays from here on out. I still wished Jesus a Happy Birthday when I woke up this morning, and since He’s the “reason for the season,” I’m sure He didn’t mind that my house isn’t decorated with a bunch of glittery, twinkly stuff.   It’s the thought that counts. 

Thinking back, the one place I can truly say I enjoyed December was at my grandparents’ house.  They lived right next door, so we went there every afternoon after school.  My grandmother always had some snack waiting for us, usually hot from the oven.  About two weeks before Christmas, my Great-Great Aunt Renie would bring my grandfather the best coconut cake in the world, and he’d tease us with it for days before he finally cut into it.  Unfortunately, she took the recipe with her to the grave, and I haven’t even been able to come close to it since then, despite years of trying.

One of the very best things for a kid in December, though, was presents.   Every year, my grandparents did something that drove my mother nuts: they let us open presents throughout the month.   That was my grandfather’s doing, and he had a story to rationalize his behavior.  Once upon a time, he had a little sister, Rosalie, who wanted nothing more than a doll for Christmas.  His parents got the doll and were saving it for Christmas, but Rosalie got sick and died suddenly, just before Christmas.  His parents always regretted not giving Rosalie the doll before Christmas.

So, no stockpiles of presents from our grandparents on Christmas Day: we’d opened the majority of them long before.    In my step-father’s family, we opened everything on Christmas Eve, during the annual family get-togethers, but when Bunny and I set up our household, we decided that we’d open presents on Christmas Day.  As compatible as Bunny and I were, there was one area where we always failed spectacularly: gift-giving.  For years, I’d buy him Christmas or birthday gifts, sure that I’d found just the perfect thing, only to be met with his half-hearted attempt at excitement.  For his part, Bunny would sometimes try to get something he thought I’d really like, but other times he didn’t try at all.

For example, one Christmas, I opened my sole gift from him to find a wallet.  Not a fancy designer wallet, either—a plain, black wallet he’d gotten at Brookstone.  I already had a wallet.  I don’t remember what hints I’d dropped that year, but I could have printed them on bricks and chucked them at his head and he still wouldn’t have gotten them.

“It’s…a…wallet.” I said, the picture of underwhelmed.    Even Bunny, a master of BS, couldn’t sell me on how much thought he’d put into this gift.  For years after, the wallet was the bottom of the scale by which all other gifts were measured.   

“Hey,” one of us would say to the other.  “At least it’s better than a wallet.”

Finally, around year 17, I suggested we each stop wasting money on gifts the other wouldn’t appreciate.  He didn’t argue.

“We’re like the Anti-Magi,” he agreed, referring to the O. Henry short story, The Gift of the Magi.    So, from then until last year, we would buy our own gifts, wrap them, and put them under the tree.  On Christmas morning, we were sure to open something that we really wanted.

Suddenly, last October, he announced that he wanted to go back to the old way of gift-giving.   I had a moment of panic, but agreed, because I knew it would likely be his last Christmas.   One of the first things I got him was a St. Peregrine medal.  St. Peregrine is the patron saint of cancer patients, and with Bunny’s newfound embrace of Catholicism, I figured it was a winner.  Not so much—it’s still in its box, undisturbed after he opened it Christmas day.

I scored a victory with the big present, though.  Toward the end of the summer, I’d gotten an iPad. Bunny, figuring apps weren’t that important, got another, less expensive, tablet for himself.  Within a week, he was coveting my iPad.   Soon, he was borrowing it to take with him on days when he had chemo or blood transfusions.   

When he changed up the Christmas rules on me, I knew the perfect gift.   I bought Bunny’s iPad just before Thanksgiving.  Then, with Rosalie’s story in the back of my mind, I promptly gave Bunny his present.   I’d never seen him so happy with any present I’d given him before.  He immediately started downloading apps for all his interests: chess, poker, history, big foot, etc.  I think he used it every waking moment.

Finally, I’d broken the curse of the Anti-Magi!   As things turned out, Bunny entered the hospital for the final time three days after Christmas.   When it became clear that he wasn’t coming out, one of the first thoughts I had was gratitude for my grandfather’s insistence on telling Rosalie’s story.   Her legacy allowed me to make Bunny’s final days a little brighter, and that thought warms me.

As more time passes, I’ll get comfortable with Christmas again.   I’ll be able to decorate without falling to pieces over every single ornament I hang on the tree.   And I’ll be as happy as I can be with the incessant, crappy/sappy Christmas music in the background.

‘Tis the Season

Since early October, most stores have had their Christmas displays up, and it’s been nearly impossible to ignore the fact that there’s A VERY BIG HOLIDAY lurking just around the corner.  A short year ago, I had a husband and a mother, and was planning to spend the holiday with both of them.   Now that I have neither, it’s hard to get excited about Christmas.

Growing up, my mother put up our tree on the day after Thanksgiving every year, or by that Sunday, at latest.  It was a tradition I carried on in our family, and Bunny was more than happy to help.  His specialty was stringing the lights.  More lights than one tree should ever hold.  We’d hang the ornaments on the tree and drape all the stockings (his, mine, JoCo and kids’, and one for each cat) over the china cabinet or the patio door.  Hey, we didn’t have a fireplace in Florida!  My mother was fairly crafty when it came to crocheting and embroidery.  About 20 years ago, she made each of us Christmas stockings, embellished with sequins and embroidered with our names.

Last year, since we were supposed to be going to Louisiana for Christmas, we didn’t haul out the big tree.  Instead, I got a table-top tree and decorated it, just to be festive.  I later added a second table-top tree, this one made of aluminum, because I couldn’t pass it up—it was a miniature version of my maternal grandmother’s huge aluminum tree, so it was nostalgic and quite mid-century modern, which is my décor style.

I tried to get into the holiday spirit this year on the weekend after Thanksgiving.  I opened the storage container that holds the stockings, and the first one I came to was Bunny’s.  I held it in my hands for a few minutes and studied the scene with Santa climbing into a chimney against a blue background.  Santa’s suit is blinged out with red sequins, and “John” is embroidered across the top in dark thread.   I couldn’t keep the thought out of my head: once upon a time, my mother hand-made this stocking for my husband. Crap!  If there was one symbol of my lost loved ones, this stocking had to be the front-runner.  I couldn’t put it away and shut the lid fast enough.

Now I was stuck.  It just felt wrong not to celebrate, but I’d be an emotional wreck with all the reminders around me, glittery and beautiful as they are.  I hit upon the solution relatively quickly: instead of full-blown Christmas, I’d celebrate Chanukuh.    Long before my family celebrated Jesus’ birth, Jesus celebrated Chanukuh.   I’ve never done a full-blown, eight-day celebration of Chanukuh, and it’s certainly a holiday I’d never shared with Bunny or Mama.  No ghosts of Christmas Past when you’re celebrating Chanukuh!

Off to Target I went, picking up a menorah, candles and dreidels.   Then, because I have a near-morbid phobia of open flames, I bought a menorah with blue, candle-shaped light bulbs, too.  I Skyped my friend William to show them off, which sparked a case of menorah-envy in him.  The next day, he went to the same Target and got his own menorah, candles and dreidels.  I told him that two menorahs and accessories selling at the same North Hillsborough/South Pasco County Target within 24 hours would create a skewed sense of demand.

So Saturday at sundown, I will celebrate the first night of Chanukuh with William and my family.   My family will light the menorah and spin dreidels for the first time, and learn how another religion celebrates an important holiday.   We will eat the Cajun all-purpose winter meal: gumbo.  We will be culturally and nutritionally enriched, and we will be happy.   The Christmas trees can come out again next year, when I’ll be ready for them.