It’s 2PM on Christmas afternoon.. the day has been really peaceful and good. .. Our expectations about the day were so painful that it was pretty easy to surpass them. Again.. it’s showing me that worrying about the future is pointless in our situation.
Last night we went to friends Lou and Kathy’s Christmas party. Lou had arraigned for everyone to bring their potato cannons to give Sam a Christmas eve salute.. The twenty or so of us took turns shooting spuds into the starlit sky in honor of Sam. Highlights included a successful launch of a potato launched with a lit sparkler stuck in it.. and a four gun volley fired simultaneously by Diane, Max, Gabe and me. It was just the sort of tribute Sam would have wanted.. I hope he saw it… We then made a quick stop by our good friends the Kenny’s before going home. Diane gave Jen a ceramic wind chime that she’d helped Sam make at a school program in 3rd grade. That exchange brought tears to everyone’s eyes… As we drove home from the Kenny’s at about 11:00 we all talked about how to close the day in Sam’s memory. When we got home, Max and I built a large fire outside.. the four of us came around the fire and sent our thoughts and prayers to Sam.. we each wrote him a Christmas letter and threw it into the fire. We also sent best wishes to Sam’s pet bird Gabby who died this past spring. Gabby’s death was the saddest thing we’d ever had to face as a family until now. We put some chemical salts into the fire to create some color and sat there watching the blues and greens of the fire burn up the letters.. It was very peaceful…
It was 12:30 in the morning before we got back to wrapping presents. We’d had so many visitors that day that Diane and I had barely gotten started on that task. Neither of us had had much energy for shopping since Sam died.. but somehow we still had a huge pile of packages that needed wrapping. . Sam’s physical absence and his spiritual presence were both so strong to me. I bounced back in forth between peace and deep, deep sadness as we arraigned stuff around the tree. The final scene: the tree, stocking, presents looked almost like any other year .. but it was so very different. I will never forget the way I felt as I walked back upstairs. We finished up at around 2:30AM… and fell in bed exhausted.
At about 7AM Diane woke to a knock on our bedroom door.. she thought it was the kids.. but there was no one there. Diane felt it was Sam knocking. She got back in bed and looked out the window… at this point I was awake, too.. Outside there was the most beautiful sunrise.. the sky was filled with reds and pinks. A few minutes later we heard Max and Gabe getting up.. they came into our room and sat on our bed for a bit. We all then went down the stairs together just like in all years .past. but without Sam for the first time. . This time we carried a lit lantern with us. The lantern has was given to us by the Haunted Forest folks and has Sam’s name engraved on it. We kept it lit all day. Instead of digging into presents first as we normally would do.. we all bundled up and walked up into the woods behind us.. We took with us a big box of stale bread, peanut butter, birdseed, peanuts and old apples all strung on bits of string. We hiked up to the same tree we decorate each year for the animals.. It’s gotten so much taller over the years. We first all came together in a circle and sent our welcome to Sam.. then had a blast throwing the food up into the tree. It looked really beautiful when we were done… We had a cup of hot Chai tea .. then walked home to continue Christmas. The rest of the morning was about 90 percent fun and about 10 percent tears… Sam’s stocking was filled with ‘sam stones’… rocks we’d had sandblasted with his name. We plan on leaving them at places that Sam loved… As we opened presents, we came together several times to think of Sam… . Several friends came by to check on us throughout the morning… so we’d stop to be with them. We were in no hurry to be done. We finally finished opening everything by about 12:30.. We sat down to a wonderful lunch that Jen brought by. At 2 I crawled away to take a nap.. I know now that all of our Christmases.. all of our holidays … are going to be different without Sam. I learned today that they will not all be totally sad.. but will have a mix of emotions I can see that we are going to have to abandon some old traditions and make up some new ones.. I think we did OK today. .. The whole morning was bittersweet to be sure..… but much more sweet than bitter .. I hear my parent have just arrived downstairs.. so I’ll stop here.. Merry Christmas everyone.. Merry Christmas my son.. please send us snow tonight… I love you so much !
-jc