This year has come to a close after what has been one of the worst of my life. We said goodbye to you only three short months ago, and it feels like only yesterday. I guess I kept thinking this pain would pass, and I’d somehow get over it. Something someone who’s never experienced can only assume.
Now on Christmas Eve, we are house divided. With a recent divorce and your adult grand daughters with their significant others, it doesn’t feel like Christmas at all. Tonight there was no stress of food prep. The house isn’t filled with loud laughter and noise. It’s a quiet night, and only the calendar tells us it’s Christmas Eve.
Christmas was always your favorite holiday. You always decorated above and beyond. Remember when you’d yell at me because I didn’t want to decorate? “You have to decorate for those girls!” So begrudgingly, I would but not because I wanted too.
Well, I couldn’t bring myself to do that this year. I didn’t have the mental strength. The thought of it was far more than I could bear. Few gifts were purchased, and no gorgeous packages fill the house. Just an emptiness that I can’t fill. I was told that I get one free pass, this year can come and go, but next year I have to decorate and celebrate, to honor you.
I know you are checking in on us, I feel it. You know the girls are on their own with their boyfriends. I think you’d be delighted to see their happiness. They’ve become quite the little homemakers. I know that you gave them the best part of yourself. They wouldn’t be the women they are without you making me who I am and helping me raise them. They both have the best parts of you.
As for me, I’m doing what I can to get by, but I keep getting swept away in missing you. I’ve picked up dancing again. We’ll see how it goes. I think you’d be happy because it’s something I always loved. We would always watch the ballroom dancing or any musicals on T.V. and we’d be swept away by their movement. I can’t sit through them now without getting so emotional I need to turn it off. I feel so weakened by all this.
I remember you telling me how hard it was to lose grandma. How even as an adult, you need advice. I can admit that every day at 9 a.m. I’ll expect that phone to ring and hear your voice. Or when something happens, the first thought is, “I gotta call mom.” I don’t know if that feeling will ever go away. There are a lot of tears and I know you’d be so mad at the pain we all are in. You spent your life trying to save us from pain and heartache and to know we’re so hurt would upset you.
Dad’s doing alright. He’s getting by like the rest of us. I know his evenings are lonely. His days are filled with busy work and lunch dates between the kids and us. I check in daily and make sure he’s okay. Good days and bad days. That’s all he can say.
I guess I will end this by saying I love you and miss you. I hope I’m still making you proud. I’m living every day missing you.
Lady Bootlegger 