My living room is a wreck—the kind of wreck you’d get if Hobby Lobby, Joann, and Michaels all vomited in the same room.
It started Monday, a rough day in a rough week in a rough season. So rough that I watched Monday Night Football alone, knowing I’d be terrible company even with my football pal. So, I dragged my skinniest tree and the totes of most treasured Christmas decorations out of storage and into the living room. Then I hauled a pile of crafting supplies—shirts, vinyl, cutting machine, and accoutrement—to the living room. Hence the crafty, decoratey vomitorium. My reasoning was, maybe I’d decorate a little, make a couple fun shirts, and watch football. Yell at the TV, cover my eyes, squeak when warranted. Fluff a tree, hang some ornaments, weed some vinyl.
Two out of three ain’t bad, right, Meatloaf?
Those totes are still sitting in their same spot, still full of Cooper cardinals and decades-old ornaments—a cross stitched gingerbread house and our five cross stitched place cards, a wind-up sleigh and Santa as old as I am, angel chimes and a favorite Christmas piano book, and our stockings. Not much makes the Christmas cut these days, but the few things that evoke memories will eventually take their places around the living room.
For now, the pile of Christmas is taunting me. It shouldn’t be so hard to decorate. Not this year, too. I remember last year, an even larger pile of decorations waiting patiently in a corner of the living room. It took two weeks last year before I opened the totes. I finally gave up, paring down my plan to the bare minimum, only bothering with the sentimental favorites and returning the rest to storage (an approach I’ve adopted in many areas of my life). This year, I thought I’d do more, maybe put up both last year’s cardinal tree and the traditional woodland tree I’ve loved, but I’m on day five of a naked skinny tree and still-packed totes.
I didn’t expect this year to be so hard—somehow harder than last year—but it is. The cushion of shock has worn away, leaving the pain unprotected, leaving me unprotected from the pain. There’s a new-to-me heaviness to the holidays and to my heart, a heaviness that slows my mind and body, that makes me a weepy, unpredictable mess of a human and decidedly bad company. The very activities and traditions that once felt like a familiar hug now lurk—a threatening presence in the shadows, waiting to strike, watching for vulnerable moments.
So the totes sit in the corner and mock me while I procrastinate by making snarky shirts.
The shirts have been an exercise in dark humor and uncomfortable honesty. I can’t handle the inspirational shirts right now; they just piss me off like it’s their job. Still, I sort of want some Christmassy shirts to wear to school. And, in true Tonya form, I want those shirts to express me, A Raisin in the Sun’s Mama clinging to her scraggly, sun-starved houseplant. In a good year, I’m not a bubbly, meet-me-under-the-mistletoe person. You’ll never catch me wearing a “Baby it’s cold outside” shirt or extending permission to “Let it snow.” Never. But I should at least pretend to do Christmas at school. My problems are my problems, not the students’ problems.
Bring on the snarky shirts.
I guess I still like Christmas lights, since those are the designs I favor, and that’s reassuring. Maybe not everything has changed. Even last year, though, I would’ve wrinkled my nose at a shirt that proclaimed I’m dead inside. This year? Aforementioned dark humor and honesty. Of course I’m not fully and permanently dead inside. Of course I still feel (although some days would be easier if I couldn’t). When it comes to being holly jolly, this is not the year; strings of lights wrapped around holiday snark really is as merry as I get.
Maybe my snarky shirts are my answer to self-imposed holiday expectations. My days are filled with things I’m supposed to do, things I need to do, things I’m trying to do. As with so many things in life these days, I am trying. Yes, I know it’s the holiday season. No, this isn’t the first Christmas without Cooper. But I’ve been honest in sharing this journey, and I’ve benefited from the honesty of friends who’ve traveled this path ahead of me. So here it is: the firsts aren’t alone in their suckiness; the seconds are no fun, either, and the pain is different from last year. I have many friends facing their first holidays After, and I empathize. I know the weariness in their shoulders and despair in their eyes, the hesitancy in their first public forays. I remember wondering if I’d survive the holidays and all the firsts. Now, into the seconds, I know I’ll survive even if I don’t know how, but I also know the pain can feel limitless—that when I think this is surely as bad as it’ll get, I’m wrong.
Maybe that’s the heaviness of this grief—knowing that I don’t know the lower limits. That first year, we think if we can just survive the firsts, everything will get better. Easier. Now I know nothing about grief is linear except the progression of time. I may have easier days—even truly good days—but they are often followed by horrible days. The contrast is harsh and I seem to have no control over those days.
What can I control? Those totes in the living room.
I’ve known all along that my life was forever changed when Cooper died, but knowing something in my head and knowing it—feeling it—in my heart are not the same. Knowing with my heart is what keeps the totes stacked in the corner of the living room, the skinny tree bare, and my stack of snark growing. When I open those totes—even the totes of the most precious Christmas treasures—I’ll have to face five stockings, five place cards, and ornaments purchased in threes. My mind knows what’s in the totes, but seeing and holding and placing the ornaments? Well, my heart . . . my heart will know.
The totes and I are in a staredown, but eventually I’ll decorate and be glad I did. I love the few things I’ll put out, and I love the warm Christmas lights. It’s hard, though, to willingly undertake a task when I know it will hurt. I’m not sure how many more twisted-but-true shirts I’ll make, but I’ll be giving those totes the stink eye from across the room the whole time.
Woods Writes 