My first international solo journey involved an overnight flight to Glasgow and a train ride up the Scottish countryside to Findhorn Bay. I arrived there in the waning light, underdressed for April in Northern Scotland, shivering but joyful, and settled in for my yoga teacher training.
Walking out of that airport into the cluster of Scottish cabs and voices, I had a floating feeling; like a plant pulled up from the soil and befriending the wind. The sense of freedom and being loose on planet earth was both thrilling and a little unsettling – with no one in the country who even knew my name.
That was independence.
That same feeling has captured me time and again these past twenty-two months without my mother earthside – exceptional need to rise to the occasion; exceptional need for self-reliance; exceptional lack of concerned other.
She was my primary concerned other. What happens when the person who might just love you most and understand you best leaves earth’s physical plane?
We keep living. We do Christmas.
Last year was the Acute Grief Christmas. It was the first one after she passed suddenly – and I mean suddenly – in the care of a doctor who, heartbreakingly, opted out of communicating her condition to the family; only waited to whisper “she’s gone” and then disappear from view forever, as I stood next to her cooling body, breathless from my run through the fluorescent hospital passageways. First the shock cratered me, then the rage, then the sorrow. That was February 2024. By the time Christmas came along, ten months had passed in the fashion of ten minutes. Life was a disaster zone – the hole she left behind still so central and treacherous we could barely move around it. In my daze, I purchased memorial Christmas tree ornaments. I forgot that I did this – probably stuffed them into an Amazon cart in the middle of the night while listening to an audiobook about grief.
Your wings were ready but our hearts were not – Granny
And there are more. We found them this week, wrapped in protective paper among the other ornaments. I love the version of me that did this.
I didn’t understand the work required to make Christmas magical until I graduated to chief magic maker. Probably I was oblivious, like most kids? But truthfully, my mother was a creative gift giver with off-the-charts organization skills, so maybe Christmas was a breeze for her when we were growing up? I place that question on the shelf with the other million things we’ll never get to discuss in person.
This year marks a new stage, the Chronic Grief Christmas period. The hole is still there, but we’re managing the edges better.
The Christmas movies make me cry; not because they’re sentimental, but because Christmas itself is a family heirloom, thick with forty years of her fingerprints. Christmas is like placing a call to the past. What we hear on that line reminds us of all we’ve gained and all we’ve lost.
Last week we watched Christmas Chronicles, snuggled in close. At the end, Santa magically decorates the family’s house just like their dead dad used to decorate it. I am a silent puddle. I am transported to the way she would decorate Christmas trees over the years – thoughtful, artful, understated. Just. Like. Her. I keep it casual, letting the tears douse my cheeks in salty rivers, rather than drawing attention with a tissue. The children don’t notice.
We procure a Christmas tree and keep it wild – cover it with white lights, paper chains, and handprint ornaments with time stamps starting in 2018 and marching forward to present day. The hands grow. Now, nestled betwixt that zany collection is a new variety – the memorial ornaments. In a world of Christmases that once signaled only openings, they remind us that some things are now closed.
It’s the last week of school before winter break; the red centre of busy season for the magic makers. Everyone is at school and I am at home working. I nip downstairs for a coffee refill between client sessions, and catch a glimpse of myself in the hallway mirror. I’m alive, yes, and she is not. It still feels like an alternative timeline, being on this planet without her.
Technically, I’m qualified to be motherless. Like a twenty-four year old stepping out of the Glasgow airport with too few sweaters, I’m prepared enough to go on living without her.
But I wish she was here.
If you’re doing grief this holiday season, I’m cheering you on.
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