I love Christmas.
Our last 3 have been … challenging. And so this year I was determined to take it back. For me, if no one else.
Three years ago were in Melbourne doing the full metro Christmas experience: Carols by Candlelight; lunch out at a restaurant; post lunch drinks at a bar on the Yarra … all the while pushing Pete in a wheelchair having navigated the most emotionally stressful few months I’d ever had trying to hold my family all together.
Two years ago was our first Christmas without Pete and it was awful. My parents came down and I threw exorbitant amounts of money into gifts for the children in an attempt to buy away their pain, but in reality, we all just went through the motions and sat around deep in our grief and it wasn’t ok.
One year ago we had navigated our first year of covid and remote schooling and on December 10 we had moved into a new house. I was an emotional train wreck. We didn’t know if constantly changing border restrictions would allow us to go home until the last minute, I didn’t get a tree up until December 20, and the kids and I spent a lot of time alternating between putting on a brave face and crying on the actual day.
This year, I was determined to take Christmas back.
I have a ‘no Christmas decorations until Dec 1’ rule that I absolutely broke by putting up lights on our house for the first time ever - mostly because I’d promised the kids but also because it was actually our own house and this year has been so bloody hard, why not? We needed something colourful and fun.
I had spent months googling and searching for the perfect Christmas tree - 8ft and pre-lit and something that would make the window dressers of Myer and David Jones jealous. As usual, I left it much too late to make a decision and get it delivered. And, if I’m honest, I was struggling with the price tag… I wanted an amazing tree, but for $3000?? Not so much.
So despite my aversion to pine needles, I went and bought the biggest tree at the local Christmas tree farm. Putting it up became a neighbourhood affair and it was wonderful. And the tree looked like something out of a movie - which is exactly what I wanted.
I wanted good food and laughs this Christmas after this year so I hosted Christmas drinks and there was so much happy noise of 18 different conversations all happening at once … at one point I did stop talking and think ‘Yes… this. This is what I needed…’
Yes, I did actually stop talking!!
And then I wanted good food for Christmas Day and so I went and bought things like enormous prawns and enormous fish (the kids delighted in showing everyone in the supermarket that the polystyrene box in our trolley had a 6kg whole salmon in it) and I was determined to make a dessert that looked just like the picture and it worked.
I wanted good company. And after the great laughs and fun of the night before, it continued in the kitchen preparing the food and around the table. It helped there was an even number of people at the table … the online dating adventures have been mortifyingly eye opening but also successful.
Late in the day I found myself realising how good a day I was having. How much I was enjoying Christmas. How much I hadn’t fallen into the hole I’d been in the years prior. How good that was.
Immediately thereafter I found myself feeling guilty, and confused, for feeling like that… I was ok. I was enjoying it all. Like really and truly enjoying Christmas. I wasn’t bereft with what we had lost, but enjoying what we had.
Then every time I looked around, there were constant reminders about people in grief during the holidays and how to tread carefully and be kind to them and yourself if you weren’t enjoying it some desperately sad people who were not ok with the season and, once again, I found myself questioning if I was doing grief wrong …
I know the roller coaster of grief will charge back down a hill again - despite all the joyous preparations for Christmas we have been smashed in the face with grief over a child finishing primary school, lost pendants with ashes in them, the loss of friends… and I know that in January when kids go back to school and I’m sending our only boy to high school and it’s me - not his Dad - who will be teaching him how to tie a tie, that we will will plunge back down into the depths of despair.
But for now, I‘m enjoying that Christmas was good. Like, actually, good.
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