Losing the Holiday Weight

The holidays were rough. My first without Tin and there were days I just could barely keep it together. Christmas is over and I spent New Year’s alone for the first time in years with no one to plan a new year of adventures with. It’s been a struggle and I have 3 more months before I hit the anniversary of his passing. I felt like I was carrying a thousand pounds through the holidays. I get holiday weight but that was not what I was ever expecting.

It has been almost a month since I last posted on here.  Sometimes, life can get in the way of all of our commitments to others.  Between the holidays, the busiest time of year at my work, travel, and budgets, sharing my weekly thoughts and anecdotes about life after becoming widowed took a significant back-burner.

But the primary reason I hadn’t shared is that my mind, in fact, my very being, was consumed by something that I couldn’t write about at the time.

An impending proposal.

I was sick during the entire 12 days of Christmas. And counting. I lost last Tuesday, thinking it was still Monday, when it was actually Wednesday. Also, I thought last year was 2019 already.

I'm so out of it.

I could blame illness. Widows Fog. General lack of interest in Time itself. So many things.

What I choose to blame is that my creative brain is in process, and that kind of takes over.

Let's go with that.

I’ve made it through our anniversary, his birthday, Halloween, my birthday, Thanksgiving and now Christmas. Each one felt empty in ways I couldn’t explain. You truly don’t realize how much a person is part of you until that part is suddenly gone. I made a point for me to be back home with my family for Christmas. My career has made me miss many holidays with family but I couldn’t miss this one. I’d feel too lonely, or so I thought…

Tis’ the season for all the things that remind us of what we have and what we have lost. This year, for me, there has been more loss and it’s much harder to shake that feeling as those around me put up lights, throw holiday parties and decorate. I can’t put up a Christmas tree. I can’t decorate. I wrapped one present and I just can’t. So I don’t and I tell myself that there is nothing wrong with skipping the traditions this year. With everything added up, I’ve earned a hall pass to the holiday blizzard we all experience every year. However, there is one thing I can’t control….The mail.

It’s been four years.  Four times, the earth has orbited the sun in full since Megan’s death.  That seems like an eternity, and yet at times, it also feels like it was yesterday.  It’s still “fresh”, yet also “routine”.

If I could have foretold the future, four-and-a-half years ago, a few days before she died, it wouldn’t have changed anything, really.  I would just know what to expect. I can reflect on it now, however. I can write to myself, 1,700 days later, telling my past not what I wanted to hear, but what I needed to.

So, here goes.

This week I felt like writing about how the arrival of the holidays has already been extremely difficult for me. These are the first holidays without Clayton. Those Facebook “memories” that pop up in my news feed are like a sharp knife from a friend. Nothing is safe from the reminders. I don’t know if I can even decorate this year but decorating is not what my words are for this week. It is the place that no one would ever think could be a heart-wrenching trigger. A place everyone goes that is designed to help you live but, as a widow, it is a place that can take more of you away…The Grocery Store.

In my 38 years, I have never once not been with my parents on either Christmas eve or Christmas day.  Even when I was in the military, I lucked out in that I wasn’t deployed over Christmas, and I was able to drive from North Carolina to Ohio, even if only for a 48 hour visit.  Since 2002, I’ve added Megan’s family to that tradition, always ensuring that my second family was part of the holidays, but simply splitting time between both.

It was convenient that both my family and Megan’s family lived within 15 minutes of each other, and we never lived farther than 30 minutes away from either.  Christmas Eve with my family, Christmas day with hers.

Since Megan’s death, that tradition has remained the same.  Now, however, there’s a third and fourth family.

As I sat down to write this morning, as I usually do, I read a few of this previous week’s posts.  On a day like today, where my mind is somewhat blank, it often helps me to zero in on a subject. Once I have that nugget of inspiration, I can usually let it flow.

This week, I’ve been inspired to write about something from a different side of the same coin.  Olivia and Staci had spoken about the triggers of lack of contact with a loved one, and the desire and intricacies of revisiting places and events they once shared with their person.

Perhaps its the different circumstances...long-term illness versus sudden, surprising loss, but I don’t feel the same way as they do.  

Sometimes, being incredibly, almost comically busy can be a blessing in disguise.  Although it’s a short work week for us here in the US, with Thanksgiving being this Thursday, I arrived to an unexpectedly busy office yesterday morning.  It was a madhouse for the entire day, and even as I drove home, I was receiving phone calls from co-workers, asking for assistance with their IT needs. I spent at least half an hour hunched over in our “office” after getting home, online, and on the phone.

I didn’t get lunch yesterday.  I was unable to even break away for 5 minutes to grab a cup of coffee.  I spent almost the entirety of the day away from my desk, with the fleeting moments that I was able to sit down on the phone.  

Password resets, email problems, printer outages, accounting programs mysteriously losing information, our president forgetting his laptop at home, broken cell phones, misbehaving monitors, and a bevy of other issues all seemed to occur at once.