The Home Stretch

Someday soon, we all will be together, if the fates allow…

I used to love that song.  Now it makes the bile rise in the back of my throat.  We’ll never all be together again, at least not on earth. 

I’m doing my best to negotiate the landmines of this season.  I’m trying to find my new normal.  Christmas was always something that I loved.  I loved to decorate.  I can’t stand to see my decorations that Sawan and I packed and then vacuumed up the needles the last time.  I can’t even open the box.  The idea of my stocking next to his just seems right, and since his won’t be coming out, then mine can stay in there, too.  It’s all just…nauseating.

So this year I decorated, slightly, with new stuff.  My nephew sold Christmas wreaths for Cub Scouts this year, and they had an option to buy a tiny little pine tree, that came with a string of lights and ornaments.  I bought that.  I have turned the lights on twice (and once was to take a picture for the blog).  I hung up a black and white vintage poster of a Christmas tree, and I got out my table linens and dishtowels that had a Christmas theme to them, because they were in a drawer and not in my Christmas box.  That was the best that I could do.  After I put the stuff out I was so depressed about it that I promptly drank too much wine and spent the next day throwing my guts up.  

The tiny live pine tree

 I have, so far, only had to leave one store because of the song playing (an improvement from last year).  It was the theme from “The Year Without a Santa Clause,” the one about the Heat Miser.  Sawan loved that movie, that song.  I didn’t see it until I was an adult, until we were together, and I loved the song, but didn’t care for the movie, as it offended my feminist sensibilities, and he teased me that I ruined everything.  His actual favorite Christmas movie, though, if you asked him, was Die Hard.  Oh, I miss him.

The vintage tree poster

I’m trying to be gentle with myself.  To not beat myself up.  To say, “Yes” as much as I can.  “Need to have Starbucks today?  Twice?”  “Need to be in your jammies today by 3:30?”  “Need to have popcorn for dinner three times last week?”  The answer to all of these in December is “Yes.”

Ok, six more days to go.  I can do this.  We’re in the home stretch now.