I Miss Vacation

We went on a week-long vacation with family to the Dominican and, I must say, it was lovely.  It was warm while it was cold and snowing at home. It was nice to sleep in, without waking to an alarm.  It was fantastic walking to breakfast and seeing peacocks and flamingos and beautiful flowers blooming everywhere. Sure there were toddler tantrums and judgmental sister-in-law issues but whatever – I was in the sun, in the pool, and I had a cold adult beverage whenever I needed or wanted one.  And there was barely a hint of the impending holidays which may have been my favorite part, aside from the free drinks at the pool of course.

As soon as we got home, literally on the way home, it hit me that it wasn’t the summer, fun time was over – it was Christmas time, and I needed to stare it in the face as the flickering lights and reindeer and snowmen lit up the highway.  I cried.  It was hard not to, remembering all that I had in front of me.  And I have tried to avoid it all, very much on purpose, because I don’t want to deal with it.  I don’t want to remember last year’s holiday, I don’t want to remember that I have to go through this year without my mom and with the family that is still mourning her.  I don’t want to start a new Christmas tradition of missing her annual lasagna, although I guess that started last year.  I just don’t want to deal with it.

But – I have to.  I have a child who deserves a happy holiday. I have a significant other that deserves the same, and a family who deserves to at least see me attempt to be jolly.  I have to do my best to not look at the date, to not remember what I was dealing with just 365 days ago, and to not focus on the fact that she’s not here.  It’ll all be okay once I’m on the other side of all of this – which is February, but still.  And yes, if I could sleep and/or drink my way all the way through all of it I would do that happily, but I can’t.  My job frowns upon drunkenness in the workplace (bastards).  I struggle with the idea of a Christmas tree with lights, I struggle with the idea of decorating while watching a Charlie Brown Christmas; I struggle because of the memories she won’t be a part of anymore.  The ones that I have I’ll continue to hold onto, but there won’t be any more stories of how excited Emily was when she opened a certain gift and how happy that made my mom.  There will be no stories of how happy my mom was to see Emily eat her lasagna and ask for seconds and thirds.  That makes my heart and my head and everywhere in between sad.  But I have to suck it up, at least on some level, and make sure that the holiday is as happy as it can be (I type this as one of my mom’s favorite Christmas songs – The Christmas Song sung by Nat King Cole – plays on my radio.  I miss my mom, not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought about her and missed her.  I would lying if I said that I didn’t almost cry at least once while on vacation and I tried to pretend I was talking to my mom when I told him all the details about the vacation (I normally would gloss over the details for him because he doesn’t really care, while she wanted to hear all about everything and everyone, so I tried to find a happy medium for myself).  I wish she was here; I know I can’t bring her back, I know that I can’t change what happened and I know that even if she was diagnosed earlier she most likely wouldn’t be here now.  But it doesn’t make it hurt less.  And it doesn’t make it easier.  The Christmas songs hurt, the decorations hurt, it all hurts.  I guess I just have to find a way to make it hurt as little as possible, or at least make everyone think that I’m not hurting as much as I am.