The holidays aren't over
I guess I'm glad the holidays are over. All things considered they were the best holidays we've had so far without Dan. They were still without Dan though. We still missed him with every breath. We had a great time with friends and family, we missed Dan, we do both every day.
I took down all our Christmas decorations. We have a ton and it's about half of what we used to have. I cut it back trying to make it easier on myself. It was all boxed up and put away by new years day. My friend came over and was impressed that I got it down so quickly. You see I used to be that person. The crazy holiday person, I would insist that all decorations stay up through New Years and I wasn't really in a hurry to take them down even after that. Enjoy them as long as possible. Dan and I would sit on the couch some night in January with the beautiful Christmas lights on, the tree sparkling. I would sigh and say "this is it, our last night of Christmas, we better enjoy it, I'm killing Christmas tomorrow" I always called it killing Christmas when I took our decorations down. To me it felt like a death, all the joy and magic suddenly gone. Then I had that great first hand experience of death, the one that doesn't get to come back out of the box every year. I don't call it killing Christmas anymore because it is not the same thing.
I told my friend who was impressed with my efficiency "ya well you know it has to all be gone by the 12, I don't want it in here for the 12." I can't have Christmas out on the day my husband died. I just can't. In the before it wasn't that unusual for us to still have our Christmas out on January 12. It's really the only thing I would procrastinate about, I just wanted all the wonderfulness of Christmas to last as long as possible. The year I was pregnant with Baby Girl I was not physically able to but Christmas up, so Dan did it for me. However Dan's a procrastinator by nature so on Christmas eve he was still working on getting all the decorations up for me. He left them up. on purpose, till Valentines day so I could get a full month of Christmas decorations. I was ok with that.
January 12 will be three years since Dan died. That year I had Christmas away by the 12, but just barely. I must have done it only a day or two before because when the paramedics rushed through my house it was still all clean, I had just cleaned it. That's good I guess. I wouldn't want the paramedics tripping over toys and Christmas as they were trying to save Dan. They couldn't save him though, he died anyway. I suppose it's also good that all the Christmas was put away when he died because it never would have gotten done otherwise. I would still have the same Christmas up three years later, with two moves and everything.
In my widow groups and really everywhere, there is a big sigh of relief that the holidays are over. I can understand that certainly, it's just that I don't have that sigh of relief. I have another whole month of holiday to get through. I have a deathaversery on January 12, and it is likely it will take the rest of January to recover from it. Basically January really f ing sucks.
Baby Girl has had a really rough week. She woke up on January 1st and it was like a switch turned on inside her. Her anxiety that had been mostly gone for about 5 months came back with a vengeance. She has good reason, this is the month her dad died, she has to go back to school after vacation. She's horrible at articulating that. Instead I have a 10 year old who won't leave my side even to go to the bathroom. She has told me every single day this week that her tummy hurts, which is her way of saying she has anxiety. She hasn't wanted to do anything or go anywhere. She had play therapy this week and she cried and screamed and kicked the back of my seat as we drove there, she didn't want to go. These are all things she did in the beginning but hasn't done in months and months and months, maybe even a whole year. She had a 'grief tantrum' the other night, where she cries, and screams, and throws things, and ends up in a puddle on the floor as I hold her and cry with her. She hasn't had one of those since summer I think. That's how she expresses her grief. She can't find a way to express how sad she is that daddy died, she doesn't have the words to describe how much it hurts (I don't have the words either) so she screams and throws and kicks and cries. I get it, it's just that she has been doing so well I wasn't expecting it.
It's January and we have one more Holiday to go. The worst holiday we have ever experianced.
I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle
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