I was doing pretty well this summer healing from the loss of Frank, then fall appeared along with the realization that all of the holidays are coming up. We loved the holidays, Frank and I – starting with Halloween. We would decorate the wrought iron railings on the front steps with orange lights and some green little Frankenstein lights. We’d put orange light bulbs in the outside lights and we’d always have carved pumpkins complete with candles on the front steps. I’d also decorate the windows with those plastic window clings – pumpkins, witches, ghosts and put fake cobwebs on the bushes. And now? I can’t bring myself to do it. Though I did buy three pumpkins and I suppose I’ll carve them this coming weekend but my heart just isn’t in it.
Then Thanksgiving will follow Halloween and though my cousin has invited me out to her place, and I’ll go, but it’s going to be so odd without Frank. Traditions that were once a part of my life with Frank are now gone. Poof. Just like that.
Yesterday afternoon I spent three hours in bed with the phone off the hook and my cell phone off – maybe it was a pity party – crying my eyes out thinking about the various holidays, especially Christmas and what that will be like this year. My initial, irrational thought was that I would skip all of the holidays altogether, just hide out here in my little house and be a hermit. Then when January hits I’ll come back out, ready to be me again. Or whoever the me is that I am now.
One of the problems with Christmas is that I already know I don’t really want to have a tree because I can’t use OUR ornaments. There is no more Frank and Patty, no more US. All of the decorations and ornaments are OURS. And Christmas was HUGE for us. While lying there on the bed yesterday I envisioned opening the door to the little closet downstairs that houses all of the Christmas stuff and I nearly went into panic mode. My breathing literally sped up and as I was crying at the same time I found myself almost unable to take a breath. To bring out the containers that house a collection of ornaments that we bought each other over the last 14 years – no way in hell. In fact, of all the ornaments and Christmas decorations that are down there, 90% – if not more than that – were bought during the time we knew each other.
I find no comfort or joy in going to chop down a tree – which we always did the Friday after Thanksgiving, and I feel nauseous at the mere thought of decorating one. How can I put up ornaments that say things like “Our First Christmas 1995” or the ones we bought on our vacations that held special meaning for us? Or the ones we bought each other every year? That was a tradition we started the first year and it helped us build a wonderful assortment of ornaments and fabulous memories. It started out that we’d buy each other one ornament each year but after the first year or two it was always multiples.
Before this year for 14 years of holidays it was all about ‘us’, Frank and Patty. Now I have to learn how to accept that it’s only me this year. I really don’t want to put the Christmas lights on the house or the garage or the Merry Christmas sign that lights up on the picture window or the holiday lights on the bushes. I am trying to convince myself that it would be okay to buy a little artificial tree and a few new ornaments that are just mine and mine alone. Nothing big, nothing extravagant, but something that would help me ease into the holidays easier with less emotional impact.
I want and need to have a new ‘first’ with the holidays, but additionally and perhaps more importantly I have find a way to give myself permission to do that because right now I feel like it would be wrong to do so.
Uggh.
Cancer - Uncensored 