Why Does Christmas Always Hurt So Bad?

Christmas has hurt worse than ever these last few years, ever since we lost Eli.  I've put extra thought into why this year and come up with a few possibilities.  One is the difference between the boys' pregnancy timelines.  When I was pregnant with Wyatt we spent a blissful, ignorant and happy Christmas season.  We received his Potter's diagnosis less than a month after Christmas.  Eli was diagnosed just before Thanksgiving and so I spent one of my saddest Christmases ever.  Surrounded by my entire family, pregnant and suffering in silence.  Very very few times was my pregnancy even acknowledged.  It was so sad.  I wonder if I'm haunted by that pregnancy.  If it has somehow carried a shadow through each year.  Same house, same decorations, same family members, etc.  When I was pregnant with Wyatt we lived in an apartment and I never spent another Christmas in that place.

The second possibility has religious roots.  I'm Catholic and so Advent is our time of preparation for the tiny Savior's arrival.  I find it hard to prepare myself in any way for the birth of a boy.  It has too many parallels for me.  I wonder if anyone who has lost girls struggles with those same thoughts at Christmas or if gender really does have a part in this.  I also remember my preparations for Eli's birth which was less than three months after Christmas.  It's just too painful.

I wrote a few years back that our family was able to escape and that was a wonderful Christmas filled with less sadness.  I don't know if it was because of the exciting things we were able to experience with our girls for the first time or the change of scenery or a combination of both, all I know is it was different.  This year is not.  I drug my feet in every way possible when it came to holiday preparations.  The only thing that really keeps me going is my children counting on me to hold fast to our own traditions.  Others that are not as important I am letting go.  Something has to give.

Life Can Be Good

To whomever may be reading this,

I don't know much of who you are, where you've come from, what you're going through and what the future holds for you.  I only know who I am, where I've been and what I'm going through.  This blog is testament of my darkest days.  I happen to think it's pretty bad and some of the worst kind of stuff a person can go through.

It has been ten years and almost a month since I gave birth to and said goodbye to my first born child, my first son, Wyatt.  It has been two years and almost four months since I gave birth to and said goodbye to my fifth child and second son, Eli.  Life has happened in the meantime.  In those darkest months, days and hours,  it was very difficult to envision any future, nonetheless one that included laughter and happiness.  

It is from that place that I writing to you.  To let you know that life can be good.  It may not be good.  It may currently be anything but good.  But it can be good.  Time, patience, hope and love are helpful.  There is life amid death and loss.   Sometimes we have to seize it and hold on tighter than ever before.  

I never imagined my life like this.  To be in my mid 30s with a perfectly carved and polished black headstone in a cemetery with two tiny coffins holding my infant sons lying between the plots that my husband and I will share someday.  Yet I also could have never imagined the love that I felt for each of those boys while pregnant, upon their births and long long after.  I had no idea what would happen to my marriage, whether we would have more children, healthy children or happy children.  Yet I sit here today blessed with four wonderful children and a husband who is truly my best friend and most fierce love.  

If we look around us and listen to the stories of the people we meet and people we know, we will recognize survivors like ourselves.  We will hear the tragedies that others have survived and we can take hope in their lives.  Without darkness there would be no light.  Without sadness there would be no joy.  Life can be good.