I love Christmas!  I love the way everyone comes together and tries to take better care of each other.  I love the way people donate toys and food and time to ensure that all families can celebrate.  I love that different religions rejoice in love in different ways but with the same underlying message.

I love the lights and the trees and the pretty snow.  The school concerts and crafts and crazy sweaters.  The music…I LOVE the music!  Especially the Rosie O’Donnell Christmas CD’s where she sings along with other artists.  Max keeps telling me they have been rated the worst Christmas CD’s of all time, but I LOVE them!

One of my favourite parts is decorating the tree and the house.  This job has changed over the years; from a time when all the kids helped enthusiastically, to me having to bribe them to help, to fewer and fewer of them being around.  Most years now it is Bridget and I working together. My kids make fun of me for all the crafts and ornaments I have saved from over the years.  Bridget’s comment this year was, “how did you get 4 kids who all missed the art gene?”

This year was a little different.  We got out the bins of our decorations and we got out the bins of my mom’s decorations…and the tears started to flow.  I come by my love of Christmas honestly.  My mom also loved Christmas!  She loved her Christmas village and Wilhemina K. Bear and her partner Frasier Fur. Most of all she loved having her family gather together.  Every year, no matter where we were, everyone gathered for Christmas at Gramma’s at some point.  She especially loved seeing all the “grands” get together!

Waves of Grief

Some memes are so true!

The tears got me thinking about grief.  I love the grief meme that shows the difference between how we think it should look and how it actually looks, and I love the analogy of grief as a wave.  At the beginning I was bombarded with waves and it felt sometimes like the undertow might pull me under.  Then the waves got a little more gentle but they were still coming all the time.  Then they spread out a little until there were days that I didn’t get hit at all, and I could think about happy memories without being sad.

Then we opened the box with my mom’s Christmas village and I felt like I had been standing in the water and got knocked over by a tsunami.  All of a sudden I was back to the beginning when my heart was freshly broken.  Now the waves are gentling again, but I miss her and smile through tears every time I look at the village.  I feel grateful that she is still part of Christmas, but I really just want her to be here.  

I’m not sure who came up with the analogy but it helps me to know that this is a thing that others are experiencing as well; it helps to know that this is a “normal” part of the process.

Christmas 2020

Christmas Eve 2019

My mom and I have always been a lot alike and that is another thing we share… gathering with family and friends is also my favourite part!  Again, this year will be different.  For the first year we will be missing a Truchon on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning.  Phil, Jessica and Ethan are staying in Newfoundland where COVID isn’t an issue and they will leave a big hole in our celebrations.  

As much as I hate that the year that we lost gramma and pepere is the year that extended family gatherings can’t happen, unfortunately I fear that will be the case.  We will have to make up for it as soon as gatherings are possible!

Christmas 2020 will not be the same.  Traditions are changing and there will be holes around the table and in our hearts, but we will find ways to be together online and maybe we’ll even create some new traditions.  

As Maria in my all-time favourite movie, The Sound of Music, says, “When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.”