Five Minus One

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.

I’ve had this first blog in my head for weeks now. I knew pretty exactly how it was going to be. And then life happened, so you’re getting this blog entry instead. The one thing I do know is that I’ve got a lot of things rattling around in my head, so the original blog entry will show up at some point.

This weekend is important. It depends on how you count things, but it’s one of our first big anniversaries since Colin’s death. Last year, on December 2, I woke up and went to the hospital with my back killing me. By the end of that day, Colin was in the hospital and, in some ways, never really returned. I guess that makes Dec. 2 the real anniversary, but since it all happened on a Sunday, that makes this day kind of critical in my mind. I guess it doesn’t really matter. The point is, special dates will keep coming up and we’ll keep thinking about him.

But this weekend was also unexpected. I started Saturday wondering about the existence of ghosts. By the middle of the day, I was having one of the first crying jags I’ve had about his death – and this after a week of complaining to therapists that I’m being far too stoic about handling his death. By the evening I was drunk and telling some near complete stranger about Colin’s death at a party, because I’m a real upper these days.

Now, I don’t know if I believe in ghosts. I haven’t really thought about them much since I went on a tear through all the ghost stories in our school library when I was about 10. The highlight of that reading adventure was the chapter on “erotic entities.” I didn’t know what the word “erotic” meant at that point and, boy, did I get an education. What I do know is that all our Lego alarm clocks went off Saturday morning (Emma says hers didn’t, but I heard two separate alarms from the kids’ room).

We got the clocks around the time of one of our big Legoland tricks. I have Superman, Noah has Batman and Emma has Batgirl. About a year ago, Colin became extremely interested in these clocks, carrying them around and arranging them for hours on end. I thought it was cute. I remember Noah being annoyed that his brother kept wandering off with his clock. I associate the clocks with Colin.

The thing is, the alarms shouldn’t have gone off Saturday morning. I don’t remember setting mine. There was no reason for me to do so. Ditto the kids. There’s dozens of logical explanations for why they could have gone off. I get it. I still choose to focus on the fact that I went into this weekend apprehensive about his memory and then, to start the weekend off, some of his favorite toys made themselves known. Like I said, I get the rational reasons. I prefer the version where a little Colin ghost came and reminded us about him.

Then again, it’s not like we have troubles remembering him. You can’t escape him in the house, in our life. Later Saturday afternoon, we went to a bazaar at the school. One of the things about my life right now is how boring it is on some level. Christina had a stand to man. Emma and Noah each took 10 euros and disappeared to the sales. And there I was alone. My family didn’t need me actively. Normally, until a year ago, my job right then would have been to watch Colin while everyone else ran around.

Now I don’t have that job. It hit me pretty hard. It isolates you. There were any of a number of friends and acquaintances at the school right then, but the last thing I wanted was to bring anyone down with my problems, so that’s me, sobbing alone behind the school, because there were fewer people there right then.

And then I did the only thing that made sense: Tracked Noah down and followed him around until he asked me to leave. Then I went and stalked my wife while she was trying to work. And then it came my turn to man the bratwurst stand, but they had already sold out (which was kind of my plan when I took the last shift at the stand), so we went home.

And then came the party, and then came too much beer. I don’t even remember what the poor guy said to me at the party, I just remember turning to him and saying “Look, my son died two months ago,” which is about the best conversation killer there is out there. What have we learned? I keep my problems from my friends, but drunkenly tell my friends’ friends about what’s going on if given the opportunity. This is why I’m in therapy, I guess.

I don’t know how often I’ll be keeping this blog. I don’t know if there’s ever going to be a point to what I’m writing, but here we are. Thanks for reading.