I’m worried I’ve created the world’s most depressing Advent calendar.
The last two years, I found a company that puts together picture Advent calendars for you. You upload the photographs you want, pick a theme and, Bam!, you have a personalized Advent calendar.
I really didn’t want to do one this year. It seemed somehow gruesome to put together a calendar including pictures of Colin. But Christina really wanted one and talked me into doing it.
I still held back. In past years, I’ve made one Emma-heavy calendar, one focused on Noah, one that was Colin-centric and one that had a good selection of pictures of all three. They were then sent to the appropriate grandparents and godparents and uncles and aunts. This year, working under a little duress, I only made one with a mish-mash of pictures of all three kids. Everyone who got one got the same calendar.
Except we’re on Day 5 now and all the pictures are of Colin. And I’m thinking the people who got this calendar must be wondering if I’ve created some personal depression anthology and disguised it as Christmas cheer. It’s not that they’re sad pictures of Colin. They’re from a year ago and he’s doing pretty well in all of them. It’s just, to me, there’s something harsh about an Advent calendar featuring pictures of a recently deceased child. To all the relatives out there, I assure you there are pictures of Emma and Noah coming.
Otherwise, we’re moving into the Christmas season and I can already see that it’s going to involve a lot of feeling our way. He loved Christmas. One of my last pre-hospital memories is taking him to day care. I was pushing him in the stroller, still thinking he was far too old to be in a stroller, but still not able to come up with any options to get him to walk that far, when we passed a senior citizen’s center that had a simply enormous inflatable Santa hanging from one of it balconies.
“Weihnachtsmann!” (Santa Claus!) he said, and you could tell he was so excited about the upcoming holiday. It must have been the last week of November, because people don’t put out their Christmas ornaments that early here in Germany. Which means that, within a week, he was in the hospital. He spent Christmas under heavy sedation in the ICU. And now he’s not around this Christmas.
We’re trying to make the best of the holiday. I’ve talked to families who lost children. Some of them say they didn’t celebrate Christmas again for years, which seems harsh. Also, Emma and Noah would not put up with that. So, we’re going to have Christmas. But it’s hard to commit this year to what used to be my favorite holiday. I’ve done very little. Christina, through sheer force of will, has gotten some decorations up. And I think we all do want to have as nice a Christmas as possible, but it feels like we’re trying to set up the ornaments while standing under a deluge. It’s all a little bit harder than it should be, and not physically. Our hearts just aren’t completely into it.
And yet we try. We went to Noah’s school Christmas concert today (where a group of kids inexplicably sang “Old Town Road” for the audience), which closed with a version of “Ding Dong Bells.” I was unfamiliar with the song. On the way there, Emma had told me it’s a pretty standard school Christmas song and that she had taught this song and “Jingle Bells” to Colin, probably last year. And there I was at the Christmas concert, having just learned that Colin knew a Christmas song I didn’t know about, and suddenly we were singing it and it dawned on me that this was probably one of the last new things he experienced before going into the hospital. I didn’t break down crying, and it wasn’t an entirely sad experience, but it’s just another sign that this Christmas isn’t going to be quite like all the other Christmases.
Then again, I suppose there’s no way it could be.