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Christmas can be very hard to bear if you have lost a child. It can be two weeks from Christmas and maybe.... yes, probably, you have not even begun to shop for anyone on your list. You have not even looked at the cards your friends sent you because most likely they involve a lovely family picture. You sit and wish you had a family...... and even though you do, sort of, you only think of the one you have lost. Wouldn’t it be nice if life were just a second person fantasy..... and that everything was still good..... for me? But it is not. When my son was killed, a year and several months ago, I thought that at some point in the future..... we’d..... I don’t know......rally? I imagined that we’d pull ourselves out of our funk and say, “well, Carrick would WANT for us to have a Merry Christmas.” What I did not imagine is that I would not care. Not about Christmas, per se, because the religious implications for me are everything. Without our salvation..... I would never see my dear boy’s sweet face again. However..... the religious aspects of Christmas seem to play a VERY small part in the hullabaloo that is “Christmas”. Everyone I know has been FRANTICALLY shopping for WEEKS. They have been shopping, sending cards, planning for the “perfect” Christmases for their families. What can I say? I used to be them. Instead, I am left with this new reality which is: my son will never share another Christmas with us again. So why send cards? Why shop? Why decorate? Why pretend to be happy when my heart is shattered and in pieces on the floor? Well, because, everyone urges me that I need to move forward for my two living sons, and for Brock for whom we care. We NEED to move forward..... doesn’t everyone? I try to pretend to care when really, in reality, I can only wish for January. Not that the new year will bring relief; indeed another year without my son is a painful passage of time. But January means Christmas will be OVER. Avoiding Christmas needs to be allowed for those of us who have been dealt such a brutal blow. I know there are others out there; others like me who have lost their child and who are forced to survive. I have met you. I see you. We are the silent survivors. We belong to a club that no mother ever wants to join- the mothers who have outlived their children club. We know horror like no one shall ever endure. We cannot speak of our sorrow, because everyone will be “brought down.” Our holidays are a pall...... something merely to endure where once was joy, happiness and even excess. Now there is emptiness. I regret all I have lost; and look back at the former me with a sense of wonderment that I was ever so naive, so happy, and that I took everything- even my family’s health and well being- for absolute granted. Christmas will never be the same. I could win a million dollars tomorrow and while I’d be happy at being debt free, probably with a killer bike....... I’d not be happy again like I was two Christmas’s ago when I could kiss my son Carrick’s face on his freckled chubby cheek until he begged for mercy. What to do? I can only hold my breath, exercise until my muscles are seizing up in pain; and pray that January comes quicker this year than ever before. Because Christmas is impossible to bear when you have lost a child.
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