And so this is Christmas

Every year of my life I have had a full size, fresh Christmas tree. The smell of the tree, decorating the tree with or without kids, sitting in the dark in the living room watching the blinking lights - I have loved it all. The first year of Covid, though, we didn’t have a tree. I can’t remember now if that was because it was before vaccines and masks or because Randy had recently been hospitalized, or a combination of the two. Holiday daughter Erin came over and we decorated the house with everything but a tree - she hung lights and ornaments everywhere and we put out many Christmas tchotchkes on tables and shelves. It was nice, but a real step back from the years when all the kids and their families would come and we’d have a big Christmas dinner. And the same thing for the next two years.

This year I gave it some thought, wondering if I had it in me to do any decorating at all. I had just been through a series of firsts without Randy: first anniversary of the day we met at the reunion, first anniversary of the lung transplant, first Randy’s birthday, first Thanksgiving. Did I really want to sit by myself in my living room and look at the tree lights? Randy always made a big production of positioning the lights and it didn’t feel worth doing on my own or even with Holiday Erin.

But Randy’s daughter Hayley has two small boys and I thought I might take them some of our family ornaments. So I dragged the bin of Christmas stuff down from the shelf where Randy had stored it above my head. I got it down, smacking my knee in the process, and opened it to find the beautiful Tetris-like packing job Randy did. And I felt like I couldn’t breathe. But I found some of the ornaments I was looking for and then I closed the bin.

And I decided I wouldn’t be decorating this year.