Last November, I had spent the summer taking care of my mother and quite honestly there were several times that I didn't expect her to make it. She came home from the hospital in August, just a few days before Russ and I started back to school. She had home health care nurses but she was still walking with a walker and we weren't really sure if I would be teaching the year or not.
Lynda's Daddy, Larry had struggled from the first of February when he suffered a fall and was taken to the emergency room and found to have pneumonia. His health was already poor and he had congestive heart failure and diabetes but he had lost a lot of weight in the months prior and had been feeling better. By early June, his health has spiraled down and he passed away the Sunday before Father's Day.
Never once did I think about Lynda being sick because she had been in good health for the years prior. My mother celebrated her 90th birthday on February 1st of this year and I poured myself into trying to teach my class. If you've been following Lynda's blog, you know the rest of the story of how Lynda joined Larry in heaven 14 months after he left this world at age 69.
There aren't many days that I don't think of Larry especially since Lynda died. There were so many things I would have liked to ask him if he remembered since he and I shared some of the memories of Lynda's early years that no one else did. And then there's Christmas and the memories of him singing the Messiah in his beautiful tenor voice. For his mother as long as she lived, he went home to Florence to sing Oh, Holy Night at her church. Yet, after his death among hundreds of recordings he had we could not find a single recording of him singing Oh, Holy Night. It doesn't matter because I can still hear him singing it just as I can hear Lynda saying " Nana, huh?" in her sweet little voice. So Christmas 2012 was a bittersweet one. Mother was spending the holidays with us and for that we were thankful but she, Russ and I all missed Larry who had always been a part of our Christmas even after he and I were no longer married.
Kris wasn't able to come home for Christmas because he had come home during spring break. That trip was the last time he saw his Dad alive. God is so good. We skyped with Kristopher Christmas morning but I missed him since it had been two years since I'd seen him. I worried about mother and I was just exhausted so I took presents out to Lynda at NMRC earlier but I didn't get her to bring her home. I was so worried that it was going to be mother's last Christmas with me that I kept thinking, I'll spend time with Lynda later. I think I slept almost all of Christmas break from shear exhaustion. Oh, how I wish this Christmas was last Christmas. Life was so different this time last year.
So different.
Now for almost four months I've wondered what I was going to do this Christmas. Again I am exhausted. I've always shopped for Lynda as I see things I think she'd like so I already have pink flannel snowman sheets for her bed and a new Christmas sweater hanging in our winter clothes closet. I have loved Christmas since I was a little girl...the lights, the magic of the season and the traditions. Christmas has a completely different meaning this year. I'm skipping most of Christmas. Thankfully we will be able to spend time with Russ's son Kelly who lives just miles from us. I'm giving up the expectations of it being a Christmas that I can just turn off my longing to see all of my children during the season--the son in Olive Branch, the son in Denver, the step-daughter in Lake Charles and the daughter who is now in heaven. I don't want to remember how it was and I don't know if my heart is strong enough to go through the holiday as if everything is normal. Where I've always had a Christmas book since the children were little with what they wanted for Christmas, what Santa brought and a million other details that made our hectic house run smoothly on Christmas morning--it won't be that kind of a Christmas this year. Every year in the beginning of my "Christmas Book", I write about the changes in our lives during the time since last Christmas. The new babies born, the new home locations, what happened during the year that was important. Some Christmas Eves, we get out all of the Christmas books and take a long walk through memory lane. It is a rich experience and one that is sometimes hard to look back at Christmas 1999 which was my Daddy's last Christmas or read the entry I made last Christmas about Larry. There are pictures of the grands as they were added to the family and a documentation of our lives throughout the year. Being so close to the end of the year and the beginning of a new one it's just natural to use Christmas as a marker of the end of another year and the promise of a brand new year a week later. I've made the decision to sit out a lot of the things that usually are a part of Christmas. There are several Christmas songs I will turn off of the radio the second they begin. I'm going to take the season one day at a time and reflect on the things that are most important. I choose joy.
I've given myself permission to lower the expectations of doing
everything like I've always done them Christmas after Christmas. I've
given this a lot of thought in the days and months since Lynda died and
I've made a choice to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I've decided to
really celebrate what the birth of this baby means to me this year in a
more personal way than ever before. This is Lynda's first Christmas in
HEAVEN! It's her first Christmas celebrating with JESUS! While she is
listening to the angel choirs worship our Heavenly Father I cannot even
begin to imagine the scene. While I have always been thankful that
Jesus left heaven and came to earth to be born as a human baby and lived
and died for my sins, this year this age old story repeated each December is even more personal. My Lynda is
there with Jesus and how can I be sad when she is in paradise?
I will probably miss a lot of gatherings because my emotions aren't reliable and will twist my heart into a knot without a second's notice. I'm not trying to hurry it up to get it over with or skip it altogether (although I did give some thought to the idea), instead I want to begin some new traditions. I may pull out the box of ornaments that cradle the precious ornaments Lynda made as a child or were given to her by someone special in her life. I may buy a few more angel ornaments this year than the snowmen I bought last year. I'll spend more time taking angels off the angel trees to give back to someone who needs help this year because helping others will fill some of the emptiness that Lynda left in my heart. Mostly I think I'll spend time dreaming of what Christmases to come will be like when I too am able to celebrate in heaven with Jesus and will be reunited with Lynda.
This Christmas will be different than any I've ever had because I now have a child in heaven. And since I've never experienced this before I have no idea exactly what to expect. I just know that this will be an unscripted time with no deadlines or expectations that I've put on myself. I will be walking totally by faith with my eyes toward heaven and ever diligently looking for God's miracles of grace and mercy along the way.
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