This doesn't mean we aren't sad. The old adage says that time heals all wounds. Time doesn't heal your wounds. I am no less sad than last year when I asked you How Do You Measure a Year? In fact, I think the sadness sets in more. Because it has revealed itself to be permanent. You merely figure out how to go about your day. You, instead of feeling relief from the sadness, learn how to live with it. Some people become quiet or withdrawn, others make jokes, some turn their sadness into other's happiness. I think I'm a little from column a, a lot from column b, and try to make as much of column c as possible happen.
It's hard, especially around the holidays, to be without someone that you truly cared for. As a quick rundown - let me tell you that my father was the last of his four sibling to pass away. Two of them passed before his mother. She died one year and five days before my father. My sister and I sat with her as she took her last breath. I reminded her of all the wonderful things that she did that other's don't - like have grandchildren like me. We buried her on the 19th of December in 2012. My aunt, my father's only living sibling passed away a few months before he did, and he died on December the 19th of 2013. We stood around his casket, celebrating him on December 26th of that year, which was the day his father passed away when I was a teenager. To say that this season is the hardest for many of us in our family would be an understatement. The bright cheery colors and sounds of the holidays that so many of you see reminds most of us of our most pained memories. Aunts, parents, grandparents, spouses, mentors - they're all gone. And so many of them right now. Right when you need to be happiest.
Christmas shopping is hard. Crowded places full of people wearing unintentionally hideous Christmas garbs, laughing and making plans. It's enough to make you stop, glance around and wonder how none of them know. How can you be so unaware that my life has changed so drastically, so dramatically - in such a short amount of time? It's like they aren't privy to what they have lost - what the world has been missing for two years now. It's likely to take your breath away some days.
This makes the holiday spirit a bit hard to find. Like that one particular spirit may be playing hide and seek with you. Or maybe a game of Marco Polo - and you can't open your eyes to cheat. I say all of this from a cozy spot in my bed, with the only lights being the ones on the Christmas tree in the corner of my room. So, I'm not the Grinch. That was my Dad, he did steal Christmas from us after all. I try. But it's hard. Life is still amazing and I'm so thankful for mine. But denying that my father being gone is sad - that's impossible.
I knew this weekend would be difficult. It likely always will be. It's a few days before Christmas, which we have established, can feel suffocating - and the date of the time we last saw my father open his eyes and give us a thumbs up. Last year we committed twelve random acts of kindness as the day of Dad's deathiversary wore on. To say Jim's spirit lived on through us as we bought toys, dinners, massive remote controlled helicopters, and even groceries - for random strangers - would be an understatement. He loved Christmas for the giving (and the receiving - let's be honest, this is the guy who made his birthday an entire week - giving no regard to it being called a birthDAY) of gifts. But he would also give someone the shirt off his back, if the thought they needed it.
This year we were far more low-key. We set up the Christmas tree in their family room. I know this is hard for my mother. My dad built the room with his own two hands (we helped but he wouldn't have said it that way if he were here today - he would have taken the glory, so why pretend) and he died in the same room, in front of the beautiful fireplace he crafted himself. This doesn't make Christmas cheer easier to find. Trust me. But we did it. The tree is up, there are presents under it, and that feels like a small victory in itself.
We also removed my Dad's chair from the room. He had that chair for as long as I could remember. And it finally broke in the worst possible way and there was nothing else we could do to save it. When my mother stated the chair was leaving yesterday - I thought about yelling at her. Really? Today? On this day, we are going to get rid of the chair my Dad sat in for years?
Honestly though, is there a more fitting day to remove the chair? Probably not. And Dad wasn't ever a sit around and wait kind of guy. Unless, of course, it was something my mother asked him to do. Then he waited until the last possible second and then did it. So I took it as a small homage to him. To let his chair leave us on the same day he did.
My mom set it back up, held it together, and urged me to take a picture of it to keep for myself. It's just a chair. But it also holds a lot of memories. The last time I can remember sitting in my Dad's lap was in that chair. I was twelve, we had just lost an important game in the world series of softball a day before and I felt like it was all my fault. Easy grounder to the pitching mound, I overthrew first base and the winning run came in. I was still devastated the following day when we arrived home, so I crawled into his lap and said "It's all my fault."
As all good parents do, he stroked my hair and whispered softly to me. "It is. That was an easy out." He was right. It was an easy out. And the next season, when we returned to practice - he had a new drill. He put us all in our positions, blindfolded us and made us throw buckets of balls to first base. Guess what - I've never overthrown first base since. And I never expected, from them on, for either of my parents to lie to me. Although, I'm sure I could find someone else to blame it on. If only the second baseman would have been a foot taller. Shouldn't some of that responsibility lie on her shoulders too?
The whole point is - I wouldn't have even remembered that memory had my mother not insisted that the chair leave yesterday. So it left. And we even found her a new one today. The memory of the chair will probably live on even longer than I anticipated. And I know the memories of my father will too. In the way we handle column c - and find ways to make other people happy. We'll remember a piece of him even in the smart ass comments from people like my mom who yesterday said "Go ahead and get some moon pies, get two! Don't get one for your Dad though, he doesn't need any," as I walked away. Thanks, Mom. Or from the texts from friends who said things like: Thinking of you, your father, and dead baby jokes today. Yup. That sums him up. Amazing, inappropriate, and unforgettable.
Two years is two too many.
