This will be the first year that I’m an orphan for the holidays. I’ve had some time to practice celebrating the holidays without my dad–this will be the fifth Christmas since he passed away, and he was ill for a long time before he died. I’d made peace with the fact that there would be no more handmade wooden toys for the grandkids, nothing special from Grandpa under the Christmas tree anymore. But this will be the first time I celebrate Christmas without either one of my parents in the world.
In some ways, the fact that Mike and I don’t live near our extended families makes this a little easier–we’re accustomed to celebrating on our own, as our little family team. There won’t be an empty chair at the dinner table to mark the fact of my mother’s absence. (In fact, we’ll be setting an extra place, since my daughter’s boyfriend will be joining us for Christmas Eve.) But it was very strange to realize that I wouldn’t be calling my mom on Thanksgiving day, and I can only imagine that it will be equally strange to feel her absence at Christmas.
This won’t be the first holiday that I’ve celebrated while mourning a loss. The first Christmas after my dad’s passing was really difficult. Years before that, the Christmas after I’d miscarried my first child–several weeks before I learned that my daughter was on the way–was marked by great sadness and uncertainty. But this will be the first Christmas when, as Mike pointed out after my mom’s death, we’re the grownups. From here on out, we’re the ones in charge of deciding how things go.
That’s a little terrifying but, if I’m being honest about it, also empowering, because it means I’ve been completely entrusted with the gifts my parents gave me. I can do with then whatever I want. Some of those gifts are tangible–like the nativity scene I inherited from their house, complete with the rough-hewn stable my dad built to house the display. I took out the mirrored base and created a more rustic presentation, more suited to my taste, but then I worried that I wasn’t setting up the scene the way my mother had. It took me a moment to realize that this was my nativity scene now. I could set it up however I liked.
But some of the gifts my parents left with me can’t be seen; they’re memories of holidays that weren’t picture-perfect. The year my dad accidentally broke the china platter that had survived years of military transport, for instance–the platter that matched my mom’s wedding china, purchased in France while my dad was stationed there. She was angry all day, in spite of the fact that there was nothing my dad could do to fix the problem. Or the year I found the Barbie Dream House I’d hoped for under the Christmas tree–only to discover that it was missing parts and couldn’t be assembled. That was the year I learned my dad wasn’t the magical builder of all beautiful things. He was as limited as the rest of us are.
Those imperfect holidays are the ones I remember now, for the same reasons that we recall the imperfect service we’ve received at a store or a restaurant: because they remind us that the world is never exactly the way we’d like it to be (or the way we think it could be, if only . . . fill in the blank.) Imperfection reminds us that the people who serve our meals or take our money at the grocery store aren’t parts of a machine: they’re just human beings. When we get frustrated with them, it’s because their imperfection reminds us of our own.
My parents were human beings, too. They were imperfect people, and I loved them anyway. And remembering their imperfections–not holding them up as perfect examples of a mom and dad–makes it easier to live in the world without them now. A few days ago, missing my mom, I had to remind myself that we’d still be driving each other crazy if she were here. Neither of us would have changed. I would not be exactly the daughter she wanted, and she would not be exactly the mother I thought I needed. That was the nature of our very human relationship.
But what I’ll hold onto, this first Christmas without her, is the knowledge that, in the last lucid moments of my mother’s life–when she knew it was time to say whatever remained to be said–she told me she loved me. And then she added, “Don’t ever forget that.”
If I remember nothing else about my mother, I won’t forget that. When it mattered most, she found the perfect thing to say.
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