The Christmas Tree has been around for a while. From what I understand, back in the 1500’s those festive people The Germans are credited with starting the tradition of selling dead trees for an exorbitant amount of money to overworked, overtired, over stressed parents just searching for that specific Cabbage Patch Doll and a little Hope!… who would also appreciate it if their children stopped fighting over who gets to help Mom or Dad duct tape the tree to the roof of the Tesla. It was pretty dark times back then, so they actually started setting up and decorating the Trees in September so that the children had something to look forward to for a quarter of the year. I mean, who doesn’t get excited about waking up on Christmas Morning… after waiting four months!… to open up gifts of potatoes, sticks, and lumps of coal?! Which, back in the day, I would suspect that the lumps of coal were a good thing. I mean, I’m pretty sure it was cold back then… a little coal could go a long way!
In case you didn’t notice, I don’t actually know the full history of the Christmas Tree… and I guess it doesn’t really matter to me. What I do know is that I have wonderful memories of decorating trees throughout my younger years with my parents and sister, through my twenties and thirties with my wife Kateri as we built our Life together… by myself for five years after she died… and now with Amanda as we foster new traditions and expand on our Life together. As Amanda and I decorated our tree… for the second year…!… I noticed a few cool little things that are now attached to my memories of decorating Christmas Trees over the years.
The colored lights/white lights preference thing is really what got me thinking about my Life this Holiday Season. I’ve always put colored lights on my tree. Kateri found these cool ones that look just like the ol’ retro bulbs you picture your dad stapling to the garage while balancing on one foot halfway up a fully extended extension ladder… except tiny… and LED!… which we used for years, and I kept up with in my Widowhood. Well… now it’s not just my tree… it’s mine and Amanda’s tree… and Amanda is a White Light type Christmas Tree person! Let me tell you about the tension THAT provided us in the Little Red Schoolhouse for the weeks leading up to Decoration Day!! Actually, there wasn’t any tension because Amanda and I have a healthy relationship built on Open and Honest Communication, Respect, and an understanding that Compromise is an integral part of any decision-making process involving more than one person. There’s that… and the fact that Amanda was able to find some lights that we could change between both colored and white!… not to mention 8 other colors with varying rates of flashing from “Awe… that’s calming” to “Frank just had a seizure!”. Either way… crisis averted!
Just as it goes that everything changes over Time… my (our) Christmas Tree is different this year from last… and the year before that blah blah blah. Yes, it is filled with all sorts of familiar trinkets, decorations, and doodahs but it’s still different… even if visually just a bit. I can see the changes in the missing ornaments and the addition of new ones. When decorating the tree, it was nice taking a moment to spend on each ornament, asking myself what I had attached to it, and deciding if it made the cut or not. Amanda did the same thing with her stock of memories. We did it together, strategically hooking glass snowmen, various Santas, and pictures of Xander on tree limbs until we got to that point where you take a step back to get a good look at your work and realize… it’s done. Amanda attached her Bow. I attached the Angels and fastened the Star. We moved the step stool out of the way because we were done with it… and it’s not great for pictures, turned on the lights (white… this time), and sat on the couch with the dog to take in the beauty of this year’s Christmas Tree… perfect.
Widower Notes n Thougths… on Christmas Trees:
- Colored lights over white lights.
- Real tree… period. I don’t even wanna hear your Plastic Tree Argument & Rational!… which I’m pretty sure is a published paper in some psychology magazine.
- Christmas Tins make great storage containers and double as decorations under the tree!
- Anything can be an ornament… anything. Three of my favorite ornaments are a rubber chicken key chain, a stuffed alligator from a slipper, and Santa in a hot air ballon… which is an actual ornament… because I have those, as well…! (I’m also fond of the Yodeling Pickle… which hides somewhere in the tree… and I’m jealous of a few of Amanda’s.)
- Just like ornaments, anything can top your tree. Amanda and I currently have a Bow, 2 Angels (1 on a toilet paper roll), and a straw Star with seashells at the points… yup.
- I’ve learned that the presents strategically placed beneath the tree aren’t the most important gifts given to us at Christmas. The memories attached to the pieces we pull out once a year are what gives Life to the pine tree we chopped down and stuck in the corner of the living room. Then we wrap those pieces safely back in their blankets of tissue paper and nestle them in worn boxes with edges blunted by years of, “It’ll fit perfectly… right… here!” for another 11 months… and throw away the tree. (I burn it… because I can!) As the years add up, so do the ornaments… the decorations… the memories… the feelings of Love, excitement, and anticipation.
- Because we are creatures that Love other creatures, when you unpack the holiday bins there’s also a hint of Loss and remembrance simply due to our attachment(s) to The Past and the people (pets/other living things) we’ve Loved… and have Lost. It’s all part of the gig.
Merry Christmas n Shit, Everyone…!
On the way to work yesterday, Christmas Eve, the realization hit me that I think this is the first Christmas in my life that I will be waking up in an empty house… alone. No one already drinking coffee downstairs. No one sneaking little wrapped packages into old socks hanging by the wood stove. No one making phone calls seeing when other people will be swinging by. I can’t smell the oil being heated up for the round upon round of fried dough. Nope… it’s pretty much just silence here at the schoolhouse. I did manage to fill the air with the smell of coffee… because this day needs to start one way or the other… and I really, really need it!
I’ve also come to the conclusion that as for now, that whole “alone” feeling isn’t gonna go away for a while. Yes, there are people in life… people that I care deeply about… friends and family that care deeply about me, but when I lost Kateri… even though I may not have lost everything… I did lose that comfort you have in life knowing that there is that one person… that one special person who will always be there for you… who will guide you, love you, support you, laugh with you… and hold you when you just need to be held. For almost twenty years, I never really felt alone… but I do now. Not because I’m sitting in bed on my computer instead of taking bong hits for baby Jesus. Not because there isn’t the smell of oil heating. Not because sister-in-laws went to Jamaica or because friend’s and family are miles and miles away. It’s not even because it’s Christmas Morning. It’s simply because Kateri is not here… and I wish she was.
Yes, I may feel alone and sorta lost… but it’s still Christmas Morning and I want to make the most of it. I want to connect with friends and family. I want to open packages and cards from people I love. I want to share gifts with special people in my life. I want to laugh, share stories, and reminisce. I want to push all the ugly, unfortunate, and complicated challenges out for a day and just relax with my coffee by the fire, some Christmas tunes, and most likely a movie along the lines of National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. Life will be there tomorrow when I wake up for work, but today… it’s Christmas… and I’m gonna try to focus on the things that I have come to love about the Holiday Season… even though they have become harder to see.
Well… I guess it’s not a tradition this year! And I’m okay with that. Yes, I will have fried dough on Christmas again in the future… (I wish I had some now!)… but I’m also learning about how my Christmases (holidays/anniversaries/weekends) are gonna go… and how I would like to spend them in this new life.
It’s a big, complicated planet filled with a whole bunch of humans… who are complicated. It doesn’t matter spiritual beliefs or traditions or backgrounds or placement on the globe… it’s basically try to be a part of “The Good” in the world. We can always start small and just try to be a part of “The Good” in other people’s lives… as we go through our’s.
I don’t really have much to say about this right now… just thought I should jot something down. For me, the finding the mass in Kateri’s brain was the significant date. It didn’t matter what type of cancer it was… it was in the brain and that didn’t seem to be a very good thing… any which way you cut it. The diagnosis was three days after finding the mass and we new of the melanoma in the arm from a couple of years prior so it wasn’t much of a shock. The shock comes when you barely even scratch the surface on the information out there on melanoma… when it reaches the brain. You’re immediately thrown into a world filled with word’s like “Stage 4″… and “Metastatic Malignant Melanoma”… and “4-5 Months”. That’s when the shock sets in.
WE LIVE IN A LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE!! I love that I found one for the village that Kateri sorta started for me. It seemed like the perfect piece given the circumstances!
underside of a counter. Headaches and stars… that’s all they were at that time.
but I can’t picture any of the specifics in my head… it’s a blur. It was three days before we heard the diagnosis of Melanoma… six days before I hopped on a plane to spend time with my family for the holidays… and nine days before Kateri spent her last Christmas in our little red schoolhouse… without me.
I thought it would be the Christmas decorations that I would have a hard time going through, seeing, remembering the memories attached to them, but it was the tidying of the house, organizing it, making room for Christmas that slapped me in the face with the reality of my life. It was the taking down of Kateri’s Birthday cards that have hung above
my kitchen for nine months… and reading through them… seeing the words of friends and relatives giving my wife support… celebrating her life in a time when it was approaching the end… thirty-six days later… that threw me for a loop. The last card in the pile was from me… and I kinda had to take a sit on the floor. It was the tidying of the book shelf and finding pictures spanning the last twenty years… of horseback rides in the Tetons and snowmobile rides in the backcountry. Images of road trips to Ohio (where we said we would never go back to… and then went back 5 times), sailboat excursions in Maine, snowstorms, beaches, adventures with friends, and adventures for just the two of us. Images of sister in-laws when they were twelve, at their college graduation, and then from this year holding my wife… their sister… for one of the last times. Pictures of the various places we’ve lived in… from the Rocky Mountains to our little red schoolhouse in Vermont… pictures of 
various cabins and cottages filled with the richness of what was our life… pictures of our various homes. Snapshots of a life I don’t have anymore… and no Christmas miracle is gonna bring back my sweet sweet Kateri.
with the people who are here sharing it with us. It is the relationships with those people in our lives that we celebrate as we prop up trees and decorate them with artifacts from our past, pull out the flying Santa’s, set up various Nativities, and plug in lights to soften the darkness.
I haven’t hung up the smashed and weathered piece of mistle toe that I used to kiss Kateri beneath… and it may not ever hung up again. Things change. Significance and meanings attached to those things change… and we adapt. It’s not the mistle toe that’s important… it’s the memory of feeling Kateri’s lips, of holding her in my arms, of remembering how excited she would get during the holidays that is important to me… how she would treat people… love people… how she would put on Kenny Rodger’s and Dolly’s Christmas album at 7:00am or yell out, “Festive to the left!” as we drove through the hills of Vermont at night during the holidays. That is how I keep her with me.
think Kateri would be proud of my decorating, happy with our tree (with 2 angels and a star on top), and excited that there is snow on the ground. Although Kateri won’t be sitting next to me in her robe this Christmas morning as we open gifts of food storage containers, flannels, and Obama dolls… (actually, those are all old gifts… it’s a little more sparse under the tree this year without her), but she will be with me. If you think about other people, if you remember what is important in life, if you are true to yourself and your intentions are good… if you get excited when you see an over the top display of Christmas lights… she’ll be with you, too.
Thirty Days of Mo(u)rning 