Christmas (Kara)

This year I found myself wanting to listen to Christmas songs again. Songs from my childhood, songs from years and years with Drew. Four years ago I never would have imagined that I would ever want to listen to Christmas music again, but this year was different. For me the four year mark has been significant. It’s taken me four years to begin to learn how to live with the constant ache of Drew being gone. 

Getting through the holidays is a beast of its own. Anyone who knows loss understands the gross juxtaposition between the “picture perfect” Christmas society tries to convince us exists, and the brokenness we feel when someone we love is no longer here to celebrate. Merry and bright are seemingly everywhere except in our hearts. 

Christmas was Drew’s favorite holiday. It really was both of ours. When we were young, it meant we got extra time together when he came home from Hope College and I was still in high school, or when I was at IU in Bloomington. I remember counting down the days and exactly how I felt when I finally got home, finals complete, knowing Drew and I had the entire winter break ahead of us. We got engaged on one of those Christmas breaks. I was finishing my student teaching and he was working at Universal Forest Products in Granger. We were married a year later, December 17th. It was the weekend before Christmas. (Our poor parents!!! What were we thinking!!??) Indeed it was a beautiful Christmas wedding. This year we would have celebrated our 25th anniversary. The last trip Drew and I took together was to celebrate our 20th. Recalling the wedding and that trip take my mind to some of the best moments of my life with Drew. There is so much love and joy in those memories that it’s almost too much to think about. In some ways it would be easier to forget. The homesick feeling overcomes me and I can’t bare how much I miss him...us, and what could have been.

So I do that whole compartmentalizing trick...I put those memories away just deeply enough that they aren’t forgotten and only pulled to the forefront of my mind when I feel strong enough. I don’t go there very often because it always ends the same. So back those memories go. I clear my throat, wipe my eyes, slap my cheeks if I have to, and I move on. It’s not always quite so simple, of course, but thankfully the world doesn’t stop spinning even when I wish it would. I force myself to shift my focus. I make my bed, get in a workout, and I often try to think about someone else and what they might be going through. My heart has cracked wide open to the pain and suffering that come with grief. Not only for the kids and me, our family, but for the rest of the world as well. Grief is everywhere and once you experience it, you’re never the same. The “skill” of compartmentalizing and shifting my focus has only come about out of necessity. It’s how I get through many days. After “practicing” long enough, I think it’s why, four years later, I felt differently about Christmas.

This year I decorated around the house a little more and actually wanted to feel the Christmas spirit. At times I guess I even enjoyed the season which is really hard for me to admit. It’s that complicated part of grief that makes you almost want to stay in the sadness as a way to hold onto and honor the person you lost. Each year that goes by, each anniversary or holiday, I feel further and further away from Drew. It is an awful feeling I cannot escape. 

I was baking Christmas cookies the other day, ironically a new kind I’ve never made before, and I wanted to feel Christmas. I wanted to find that familiar place in my heart from holidays and years gone by. That happy place where so many holiday memories are forever kept. So I got on my phone and searched Apple Music for some of my most cherished Christmas songs. Oh how I used to love them. Our family friend, Uncle Mylon, who used to make us reel to reel tapes highlighting basketball seasons when my dad coached, absolutely loved Christmas. He extended his DJ talents and made us Christmas tapes each year, too! Most often it was Country Christmas with lots of Kenny Rogers, Lee Greenwood and Alabama. Eventually he threw in some Jimmy Buffet and Kenny Chesney for Drew. When I listened I smiled remembering all the stories Mylon used to tell between songs and how he always sang along. It’s like I could still hear him.

The tapes, which eventually became CDs, began when my family left South Bend and moved to Richmond. We, my parents especially, left behind years of treasured memories and people we loved. The hardest people to leave were Mylon and his family. So Mylon began making these as his way to keep us all connected. They covered everything from basketball seasons, holidays, birthdays, marriages, kids...you name it. He had one for everything and we loved it! We often waited anxiously for the CDs to come in the mail! 

So when I was baking the other day I wanted to listen to Mylon talking and Kenny singing and feel that “happy” feeling. I made it through a few songs mixing, stirring, spilling, and I really tried to get that old feeling, but it just didn’t come. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what I longed for.  And then the song “Christmas Memories” came on and I thought ...Oh my gosh, I forgot about this song. As I listened I was flooded with memories and recalled how I used to cry when I heard it, even as a kid. It’s about how the Christmas memories make you cry. I think I used to get sad because I knew, even then, that life was changing. I knew that from Christmas to Christmas nothing ever stayed the same. 

Christmas memories 

Happy years gone by

They come back to me

Keep me warm inside

 So much has changed from the way it used to be

Daddy has gone

We’ll carry on…

Those memories 

They mean so much to me

Still those memories

Make me cry...

Listening with a big lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, I thought about all those memories and how they really do keep us warm...and at the exact same time those same beautiful, irreplaceable memories can make us cry. They can and they will...always. 

It’s just so damn bittersweet. I will never feel the way I used to feel when I hear those songs or remember those moments. Everything has changed since then…my dad doesn’t coach anymore, all of us kids are grown up with kids of our own, we’ve lost a lot along the way. Drew died. How can I ever expect to feel the way I used to feel? I can’t. Not anymore. And that is so sad to me.

But at the same time...I make the new Christmas cookies and still make Buckeyes because they’re Max’s favorite. Our tree is artificial instead of real, but we use the same decorations. The garland on the stairs is the same, though the bows are different and there are a few new Santas in my collection. We listen to the Cheetah Girls Christmas because the girls love it and I can listen to the old songs once again. We go to Christmas Eve service even though I skip “Silent Night,” and we deliver for Christmas Commandos, which we didn’t even understand until we lost Drew. 

It’s the past and the present. We honor the old, make room for the new, and over time we find there’s enough room in our hearts for both. 

So I tuck those memories just below the surface, still within reach, and some days I sit with them awhile. They mean so much to me and they might even keep me warm inside, but no matter what... they’ll always make me cry.

https://youtu.be/n2XD1A7HG9E
Click the link to hear “Christmas Memories” by Alabama.