Today is actual Christmas.. we celebrated our family Christmas yesterday because max had to leave early this morning.
First things first.. Yesterday I told the story of the surprise from Sam at our family christmas yesterday.. Diane write about it and invited me to share it here.. I love the way she describes it.
A Christmas Story: A Tale of Unfound Presents
It is not uncommon for things to disappear in our house, for days if not months or years. So, when we could not find two presents we purchased for Max and Gabe in September, at the Burlington Art Hop, we knew we had to search all probable places. This search began more than two weeks before Christmas.
Both John and I remember the original spot we placed them, in the mudroom. They are about 24 inches long, 5 inches wide, thin planks covered in craft paper. How hard could this be?
I was convinced I had put them on one or our closet shelves. I have since cleaned, rearranged, slid my fingers along every inch of the shelving. I also cleaned and rearranged the TV room massive closet, the linen shelves and every room upstairs. John did the same, adding the work space, obsolete closets and the garage. Nothing.
In the process of my mindful looking bits of magic appeared. To start this tale, I believe everyone has a right to their own thoughts and beliefs about communication to the world beyond ours. For me, I communicate with Sam often. I knew that when he died, he still was with me and I was entering a new relationship with him. For you, that may require a pause here. For many people, what I say is the most natural experience. It is just a bit difficult for some to acknowledge this publically.
Back to my searching for those lost Christmas presents. In the process of looking under our bed, which now houses Sam and Max’s pictures and artwork I was talking with Sam. I asked him, in my mind, “I wonder how you will connect with me, with us, over Christmas”. This is our 11th Christmas without Sam. Part of my feelings were again acknowledging that Sam would never be in another photo I did not already see or I would never experience another moment of being in “new-ness” with something/anything involving Sam. Now, rifling through past documents can bring on those thoughts. And, it is just another drink of that endless well of grief. I know it, I accept in and I let it flow through me.
No less than 5 minutes later, I am once again going through my closet and I come across a round organic raisin container. Perplexed, I just moved it aside while I look for those presents. In moving it once more I notice that the top has a slit cut in it and there are cards within. I jump down from my stepping stool and look closer to find that these are Valentine cards that I had created and we all had participated in writing what we most love about each other. I stood there knowing and thanking Sam for helping me discover these. I did not read them for I knew, deep inside me, these were meant for Christmas day.
I did not tell John about my experience. I wanted him to receive the magic of this with Gabe and Max. As a parent of a child who died you often do an internal check to try and meet the energy of others when talking about your dead child. For me, it is paramount that Max and Gabe live their lives with Sam next to them, not over them. For that, I rarely give “Sam” surprises without first checking in with them. However, I felt safe about this gift and I knew that they would help moderate what and how intense the gift could be.
We celebrated Christmas a day earlier so Max could return to Brooklyn to continue celebrating Christmas with his girlfriend Becky and her family. And due to adult children, we began Christmas at 11:30 in the morning. So nice!
We begin with the dogs and their treats because they know, from past Christmases they have treats in their stockings and new toys. They do not know about taking turns! And honestly, Chai had already eaten the treats from Satori’s stocking earlier that morning.
When it came to our going through our stockings, I gave my story about finding these cards and asked if they would like to take turns reading the cards out loud. None of us remembered making these cards and with a little in trepidation we began reading these cards.
These cards are square, in different colors, with a heart, and above the heart if a prompt such as “What I love most about Gabe (or whomever) is:” The person then fills in the center of the heart with whatever they want to say. We did that for every member of the family and again none of us can remember doing this!
I shuffled the cards and put them face down. So, we began the process of listening to our words of love to each other from many years ago. It began quite charged as I read about “What I love most about Max is: his creativity, his peacefulness, and his wisdom. I(heart)U love mom”.
All of my cards, as I was to find out, ended the same way…”I” and a heart shape “U” and love mom. John wrote his cards in a circular fashion so when we read his card we had to turn it around. Gabe, being the youngest, had handwriting that was the hardest to read. We all laughed as when tried to decipher his words. He also gave us clues as to how old these cards were since they were not dated. Max’s cards were simple and straightforward. When we got a Sam card we would want to look at his handwriting. We got quiet and then would all laugh that the Cohn boys all really did have the same poor hand writing!
Gabe read the last card of the first round. Gabe read…”What I love most about Gabe is: His companionship Love, ,Gabe”. We all totally cracked up! Only Gabe had written a card about Gabe to himself! Not only that, he crossed out the word “friendship” and then wrote companionship. What was going through his mind, we all wondered. I think we laughed for 10 minutes straight. After that, at Gabe’s suggestion, we metered the cards out throughout the day, reading the last 4 cards at dinner.
Before dinner however we ventured outside for the first time on our Christmas day together to decorate a tree in the woods for the animals. We have been doing this tradition for many years. It was moonlit and wintry as we hung and flung bagels and donuts onto a tree. Just before we began, John saw a huge meteor streak the sky. Sam was with us once again. We toasted Sam with a shot of Sambucca, placed a Sam Stone onto the tree and held onto Chai who was trying to eat all the bagels that fell to the ground.
While searching for these missing Christmas presents, not only did I find these magical cards of love, I also found 3 ornaments from 10 years ago that Gabe, John & I got in India, and 2 stocking stuffers from last year!
I continue to feel the love of family as I got up at 4:30 to hug Max as John took him to the airport. I am also filled with love of my Mom as I make her some homemade chicken soup, which I will deliver the day after Christmas.
However, it was during the time I was making ginger cookies this morning for Gabe did I decide to write this tale down. Gabe is heading out the day after Christmas for his long distance drive out West for a snowboard filled 3 weeks! Gabe and his friend Dylan loved these cookies. I was thinking of the time they tried to make these cookies on their own, with some success. Dylan died several years ago and we all miss him. It was during making these cookies this morning that I received a text from Dylan’s mom wishing me a Merry Christmas and telling me the TV has been going on and off, by itself, all day. We all take that as a wink from Dylan.
I can’t make this stuff up. For what began as a search for these missing Christmas presents, which will now turn into birthday presents whenever they are found, has left me truly feeling the magic of life. My heart remains full from of hearing all of our words of love to each other. May others know the same.
Now.. back to today:
We were all up at 4:45 to get him to the airport. It was cool driving to the airport this morning..not a single other car on the road !. I guess it really is christmas ! The airport was almost empty which was pretty cool.
I was so great having max up here for a few days…
I was home before 7 AM.. and lay down to meditate.. next thing I know it was 11 AM 🙂
around 1 Gabe , Diane and I drove to the camesl hump burrows trailhead and strapped on our snowshoes and headed up the trail . We made the summit aqnd back in about 3.5 hours .. we got back just as it was getting really dark. it was a beutiful day. warmish (22) .. with a foot or more of snow.
as we got near the top the snow was really amazing (this is a color picture.. not black and white !)
we got to the clearing jsut below the summit and ate our few clementines.. nothing beats that taste after a steep climb.
it was another 0.3 miles to the summit.. but it was unprotected.. .. the weather I’m looking at now said it was about 7 degrees with 40 MPH gusts.. that puts the windchill around -20..F>/ it felt that way. we had jsut long enough to place a samstone on the summit.. and head back before we froze !
check out the ice on my beard !
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once we got beloe trealine it became much more bearable
we hiked down watching the sun set through the trees 
we got to the car just as the last sliver of light disappeared.. it was pretty dark ! ( I had headlamps jsut in case)
we came home pretty beat..3.5 hours up and back is a good pace .. we didin’t feel liek cooking anythign new.. even thgu it was christmas.. so we took all our left overs.. sninach. home made piroges and fish from last night ..and made a multilayer creating.. diae put a dollop of sour cream and a single pmegranite seed on top.. and oila !.. it was festive !
it was a another great day.. greatful to have my family around..
Hope you and yours are having a great holiday as well !
nite all. nite sam
-me