Monday Musings: Boxing Day

“The rid­ers in a race do not stop when they reach the goal. There is a lit­tle fin­ish­ing can­ter before com­ing to a stand­still. There is time to hear the kind voices of friends and say to one­self, ‘The work is done.’”

~~ Oliver Wen­dell Holmes, Jr. ~~

Octa­mom asked:

Is your tree still up? Or does it make you itch to still have elves on the man­tle and orna­ments on the green­ery? What is your tra­di­tion for tak­ing it all down? Day after Christ­mas? The day of New Year’s? Easter? When do you put all the magic back in the Rubbermaids?

When it comes to dec­o­rat­ing for Christ­mas, we are fail­ures. Hav­ing all the extra clut­ter sit­ting around the house makes me a bit crazy. I own a lot of orna­ments — boxes of them — not to men­tion nativ­ity scenes, a large vil­lage, elec­tronic San­tas, angels, and car­ol­ers, lawn dec­o­ra­tions, etc. But in recent years, most of the dec­o­ra­tions have remained packed away.

Why?

The answer to that ques­tion is com­pli­cated. I could just claim that I’m too busy for all of it and that would be true, in part. I have a demand­ing career — I work long hours and travel a bit. I am a mem­ber of sev­eral musi­cal groups for which I must rehearse and, of course, we present hol­i­day con­certs in Decem­ber. In addi­tion to my other respon­si­bil­i­ties, I could build a con­vinc­ing case founded upon a lack of time to prop­erly prepare.

But that is not the whole story.

The truth was elu­sive until a few weeks ago. After Thanks­giv­ing, in the midst of Christ­mas lights, dec­o­ra­tions, car­ols, adver­tise­ments and all the rest of the sea­sonal sights and sounds, I real­ized that I haven’t had much enthu­si­asm for Christ­mas for sev­eral years. As I pon­dered Christ­mases past, I strug­gled to remem­ber the last time I got excited about cel­e­brat­ing the holiday.

Finally, I con­cluded that it was 2002. That’s when this pho­to­graph was taken.

We moved into this house in late Octo­ber 2002. My mother had moved to an assisted liv­ing facil­ity because it was no longer safe for her to live here alone. Although she was 85 years old and expe­ri­enc­ing seri­ous mem­ory loss, she rec­og­nized her fam­ily and delighted in see­ing my boys every Sun­day when we would pick her up and take her out. She was still able to walk with lit­tle or no assis­tance, and par­tic­i­pated in activ­i­ties at the facil­ity where she lived. The folks there assured that she kept her weekly appoint­ment with the hair­dresser, and pro­vided the assis­tance she needed to care for herself.

I snapped the pho­to­graph of her with her four cher­ished grand­sons on Christ­mas Eve. It is the last pic­ture of the five of them, taken the last time she was in this house. In the months that fol­lowed, her con­di­tion dete­ri­o­rated rapidly. By the next sum­mer, she could no longer walk or feed her­self, and we were forced to place her in a nurs­ing home where she spent the last two years and three months of her life in a fully depen­dent state. Although she could speak until she died, her words stopped mak­ing sense well before that time. For a long time, she did not rec­og­nize any­one else, but remem­bered my older sis­ter and me. Even­tu­ally, we were erased from her mem­ory banks, as well. When she died on Octo­ber 13, 2005, I was relieved. (I wrote about the long, slow process of griev­ing a loved one suf­fer­ing from dementia.)

The last two Christ­mases that my mother was alive, we tried to carry on with the cel­e­bra­tion. She could not leave the nurs­ing home, so we dec­o­rated her room and brought gifts of food to her care­givers. My sis­ter and I went to visit her before com­ing home to spend the day with the rest of our fam­i­lies. We all car­ried on as best we could, but she was in our thoughts, even though we knew that she no longer had any appre­ci­a­tion of the fact that it was Christ­mas or that she was miss­ing the fes­tiv­i­ties. In 2005, nobody felt, under­stand­ably, like cel­e­brat­ing at all so the obers­va­tion was mod­est, mostly for the sake of the boys.

A few weeks ago, I real­ized that we have never really got­ten into the full swing of Christ­mas again. Our cel­e­bra­tions have remained mod­est and, although we have enjoyed spend­ing time together, we have never regained the enthu­si­asm we exuded for the hoi­day sea­son back when we had par­ents with which to share it, and the kids were younger and more excited about it.

This year, we had a very nice cel­e­bra­tion, which included again attend­ing the Christ­mas Eve can­dle­light ser­vice. It has been very relax­ing and with­out stress. We put up the tree, but no other dec­o­ra­tions. We’ve enjoyed light­ing it and snug­gling in front of a crack­ling fire, but we have not turned the lights on the past two evenings. Although we have tra­di­tion­ally left the tree up through New Year’s Eve, with that being the last night the lights are on, I am anx­ious to take it down. I might do that tomor­row, in fact.

With my par­ents on Christ­mas Eve 1962 in the room where I am writ­ing this post.

My par­ents are gone, as are Bob’s. We have no aunts or uncles, with the excep­tion of my mother’s youngest sis­ter who resides in South Dakota. The kids are grown — Mat­tieBoo, the youngest, cel­e­brated his sev­en­teenth birth­day in Novem­ber — but we are not yet grand­par­ents. Maybe we are expe­ri­enc­ing a nor­mal tran­si­tional phase between the days of par­ent­ing young chil­dren and watch­ing our par­ents enjoy being grand­par­ents … and being the grand­par­ents ourselves.

Per­haps I was wrong when I con­cluded that I had fin­ished griev­ing by the time my mother actu­ally died. I was very angry about her cir­cum­stances and the man­ner in which she was forced to live out her life — help­less, depen­dent, utterly lost, her final sen­tence was what she had always described as her worst night­mare and we were unable to assist her. Maybe I’ve remained angry and my anger has man­i­fested itself in rela­tion­ship to the hol­i­day I used to love most. It might be that finally rec­og­niz­ing and acknowl­edg­ing my anger will allow me to release and move on from it in the com­ing months and years.

I am hope­ful that my Christ­mas funk will resolve itself in the com­ing years. I believe that I need to make a con­scious effort to regain my enthu­si­asm through a com­bi­na­tion of embrac­ing the fact that we are now, as Big­Bob enjoys remind­ing me, the “old folks” — and imple­ment­ing some new tra­di­tions. Per­haps next year we should plan a fam­ily vaca­tion and cel­e­brate the sea­son in dif­fer­ent sur­round­ings. We will never again cel­e­brate Christ­mas in the same way we did for so many years in this very room. Those days and the peo­ple with whom we cel­e­brated are gone. It might be that I have dis­cov­ered one draw­back of liv­ing in the home in which you grew up where you con­stantly con­front your mem­o­ries — good and bad.

Here’s to ring­ing in a happy, peace­ful 2009 and look­ing for­ward with antic­i­pa­tion and won­der­ment to Christ­mases future!

Pre­sent­ing the finest of the writer’s blogs by the blog­gers who write them: Top 5 Picks as cho­sen by the Jan­u­ary 9, 2009 WOOF Con­test contestants.

Poetry

• Dragon Blog­ger & Jen­nifer M. Scott – The Fallen Knight — a poem in the fan­tasy genre about a knight hunted in the snow.
• Dragon Blog­ger – Mad­ness for Love — A ran­dom twit­ter poem based on 7 words turned out to be about search­ing for love.

Non-Fiction, Phil­io­soph­i­cal, Opin­ion Piece

• Hope­ful Spirit — Reflec­tions on Propo­si­tion 8: California’s Shame — A two-part dis­cus­sion, from a pro­gres­sive Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, of Propo­si­tion 8. The sec­ond part is found here.
• JHS, Esq. — Mon­day Mus­ings: Box­ing Day — She says, “In recent years, I have done very lit­tle dec­o­rat­ing for Christ­mas. It took me a long time to fig­ure out why I was no longer get­ting excited about the hol­i­day … but I think I finally found the answer.”

Flash Fic­tion, Fiction

• Jen­nifer M Scott – Every­man – about a ser­ial killer.

Brought to you by Plot­Dog Press with the Ser­ial Sus­pense Screen­play “Inter­ven­tion.”

Other Jan­u­ary 9, 2009 Con­tes­tants:
Poetry

• Jen­nifer M. Scott – Christ­mas Eve — A poem about Christ­mas Eve.
• Jen­nifer M. Scott – Seek­ing Des­tiny — A poem about grab­bing your own destiny.
• Jen­nifer M. Scott – Grat­i­tude – A poem ded­i­cated to a for­mer teacher.
• exquis­ite corpse — Decem­ber Blan­kets — A col­lab­o­ra­tive poem writ­ten about snow.
• exquis­ite corpse – Bro­ken Christ­mas Carol – A col­lab­o­ra­tive poem about Christ­mas with an odd turn of events.
• Dragon Blog­ger – Sac­ri­fice is Sal­va­tion — A poem about mak­ing sac­ri­fices and find­ing hope.

Flash Fic­tion, Fiction

• Jen­nifer M Scott – Every­man – About a ser­ial killer.

Want to par­tic­i­pate in the next WOOF? Sub­mit a link to your best writ­ing post of the week using the form at the bot­tom of this page.

Tech­no­rati Tags: Mon­day Mus­ings, Plot­Dog Press, W.O.O.F. Con­test

On the Same Topic:

• Mon­day Mus­ings: Expec­ta­tions About Prayer at Pub­lic Events
• The Focus for 2009
• An Inde­pen­dence Day Reflec­tion: “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”