holidays deflated
I used to be a holiday person.
Seriously, like I always hosted the big family dinners with lots of homemade goodies, decorated the house for every season, spent way too much money spoiling my kids with too many gifts, and dutifully upheld family traditions and rituals for each occasion.
It’s probably no surprise that now that I’ve lost a child, I’ve lost my holiday enthusiasm. My merriment mojo has left the building.
The first holiday I had to endure after Libby’s death was Easter. For the past 18 years, I painted eggs with the kids a few nights beforehand, and then woke up around 4am to hide them along with the hundred or so plastic eggs I’d stuffed with jellybeans and candy. I stuffed two baskets for each child with tons of candy and gifts and hid them to find along with the eggs.
Libby ADORED this tradition. From the time she could walk, she toddled around the house screaming with glee every time she came upon an egg. She didn’t care if it was hardboiled or full of treats — she just jumped up and down screaming, “I found one, Mommy!” She especially loved finding the eggs that she had painstakingly painted (she always took longer than the rest of us because she wanted hers to be juuuuuuuust right).
As Easter approached this year, I couldn’t bear the thought of going through the motions of our usual routines without my baby girl. The past few years, as her brothers hit their teenage years, the holidays became more about Libby than anyone else. There didn’t seem to be any sense in painting eggs and doing an egg hunt without her. So, I had to pivot.
I also would’ve felt like a terrible mother not doing ANYTHING, so I made baskets for Max and Grayson. I didn’t want to just unceremoniously HAND them the baskets, so I created a scavenger hunt with clues hidden in plastic eggs that they had to follow to earn their reward. I think the boys appreciated my efforts and understood that my heart wasn’t all-in this year.
We all missed Libby’s unbridled enthusiasm. The quiet was deafening, and painful.
My aunt planned a pretty epic egg hunt and dinner at my mom’s house, since my mom was too sick to go much of anywhere. And as much as I appreciated the family being together, I just didn’t care about collecting eggs and winning prizes. I grabbed a few, put them in my basket, and then locked myself in my mom’s bathroom and cried — because you know who would’ve freaking LOVED that egg hunt more than anyone else in the family? Libby. And do you know who will never get to paint or hunt another Easter egg? Or teach her younger cousins the best hiding spots? Or carry on my traditions with her own kids, like I know she would have?
My daughter.
I ended up writing Libby a message about how much I loved and missed her, and how it just wasn’t the same without her, put it in a plastic Easter egg, and took it, along with some flowers, to the memorial at her accident site. And then I just sat there and cried. And then I went back into my car and sat there like a crazy person screaming “I HATE YOU!” at all of the car-carriers driving by. Not my finest moment, but oh well.
Today is Mother’s Day. There’s a special kind of torture reserved for mothers who have lost a child when it comes to Mother’s Day. Am I still a mother? Yes. I still have two beautiful kids and I know that I’m important to them. Do I feel like celebrating a day devoted to my “Mom-ness?” Hell, no. It just feels wrong. Incomplete. There’s one of us missing, and it’s impossible not to think about. It’s like the elephant in the room is sitting on our chests.
Actually, the elephant in the room is still hung with a magnet on the side of the refrigerator — last year’s Mother’s Day card from the kids, bought by Libby who apparently HAD to get the most GIANT card. Inside are the boys’ names scrawled in their teenage boredom, while the rest of the card is filled with Libby’s giant “I love you” and x’s and o’s.
Upstairs in my office is last year’s card she made me at school, where she painstakingly filled out each page and pretty much nailed everything about me. Her adoration of me just oooooooozes through that card, and it’s one of my favorite keepsakes.
But I won’t be getting any more cards like that. And so I tried to focus this Mother’s Day on my own mother, who is very, very sick. I made one of her favorite meals because she said she was hungry for it, and it’s difficult getting her to eat anything. I let her know how proud I am that she keeps fighting her cancer even though it’s so, so, hard on her. I tried to Live Like Libby, and it occurred to me that in many ways, Libby learned how to live from me. And that realization is probably the best Mother’s Day present I could’ve ever asked for.
Grieving parents should have carte blanche when it comes to navigating the holidays. I managed to pull myself together enough to mildly acknowledge these two first milestones without feeling like I completely abandoned the people around me so I could drown in my own sorrow. Who knows how I will handle the events looming scarily on the horizon?
The first June 2nd (for which Libs had already decided she wanted a Hamilton-themed birthday party). The first Halloween without any kids dressing up and trick-or-treating. The first Thanksgiving. And dear god, the first Christmas where I have to figure out what to do with her stocking, her mini tree, our countdown tree where I hid a clue each night that led to a prize, and the little dancer ornament that she always snuck to the front and center of our family tree even though it didn’t match any of the other ornaments.
(Actually, I don’t have to decide what to do with the dancer. It’s going front and center, right where she wanted it.)
I am no longer a holiday person, because holidays will never be the same. They will always be a reminder of her — everything joyous and beautiful that I have lost. My goal, though, is to forge ahead with new traditions with my boys — creating different kinds of memories. And perhaps, in time, some of my merriment mojo will return.
