It’s Boxing Day. The day after Christmas which was a Friday this year and the day this should have been posted. Christmas was good. LB referred to it as the best Christmas ever. Of course, she’s only 5 and her last two Christmases were in hotel rooms. Which is not Christmas.
This wasn’t Christmas, either. My kid loves to party. Even when gripped by the rare bout of social anxiety often called shyness, she loves to have a house full of people. Especially kids, but just about any body will do. Yet, for the past almost year she’s been stuck with us.
The thing about loss is you never get over it. The pain of it simply becomes more distant as time goes by. By now I have lost too many family members and friends who were family in everything but blood. In particular, I always miss my mother most during this time of the year. Not only was she deeply passionate about Christmas our birthday comes up soon making this time of year sweetly bitter.
Too many people are experiencing the raw newness of this grief this year. Unnecessarily so.
This is the year that LB has been forming her first long term memories. In a real sense establishing her foundation. The brain is a wonderfully malleable thing, but I cannot help but wonder how this will affect her. People talk about the resilience of children, but they are also infinitely fragile.
We’ve been navigating Santa this year. For me Santa is as real as any other social construct, a concept that seems to confound many adults. We’ve been watching a lot of Christmas movies (As an adult I have a new appreciation for how the Santa Clause explains the situation.) and I keep reminding her that what happens in the movies are not real. In response she asks, “Are we real?”
I honestly have no answer to that.
I tell her, “We are real to each other, and that’s what counts.” Which seems to satisfy her in the moment. Honestly, that is what counts. The fact that too many of us are not real to each other is the underlying cause of many of our ills.
Years ago, the 90s, I made a New Year’s resolution to not make any more New Year’s resolutions. It’s the only one I’ve managed to stick to. I’m not going to make one this year, either. Change is a choice we make every day, not once a year.
I’m pretty privileged. But, as the man said, “Life is pain, Highness! Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.’ I know from experience that just when you think things can’t get any worse, they do. Yet, as 2020 comes to a close, I am cautiously optimistic. Well, less nihilistic.
Happy Holidays