That time of year

A friend who’s actually inspired a fair number of these posts asked recently if I had ever looked into a kind of quiet Christmas, for people who can’t deal with the stress of Christmas for one reason or another.

It seems like a good idea. It seems like the kind of thing a lot of people could benefit from if they’ve gone through trauma. I can see it’s place in society. Yet it would never dawn on me to skip Christmas. Even given all the misery of the last few years – I mean, in 2018 we were in the hospital with him for all of December – Christmas has always managed to remain a highlight. We bounced right back in 2019, months after his death, and had a pretty decent Christmas. I mean, even in 2018, with the horror of having a kid in the ICU, we still had a good time, all of us enjoying the arrival of the taco dinosaurs, which I highly recommend.

And yet, and yet … there is something that gets to you as you approach another Christmas with a child missing. As always, it’s the little things.

The last word I ever remember him saying to me is “Weihnachtsmann,” which, to keep things simple, means “Santa Claus” (and for anyone who feels like opening a debate about the best translation of ‘Weihnachtsmann,’ I’m really not interested in having the discussion). It, of course, wasn’t the last thing he ever said to me, but communication with him became so hard once they put the damned trach in that you were usually laboring to figure out what he wanted, not taking time to savor the words.

So, this would have probably been on December 1, 2018, the day before he ended up in the hospital. I was pushing him in his stroller to day care – because he insisted on the stroller even though he was far too old and big for it – and we passed a senior citizen’s center that had put up a giant inflatable Santa on one of their balconies. They do it every year. And Colin turned around in his stroller, looked me right in the eye and said “Weihnachtsmann!” He knew Christmas was coming. I so wish we could have given him a halfway decent one. Instead we segued from that into a month of him and Christina in the hospital and a few weeks of me unable to do anything in the house because my back was out.

He really never spoke much. The people at day care had a story about the one time he said a whole sentence – telling some kid to put down a toy – because he just never spoke that much. And he seemed to understand everything we said, so we never figured out if he was just quiet or if this was some side effect of the tumor or the chemo or God knows what else he had to go through. So, having him turn around to me and say “Weihnachstmann” was kind of powerful, because not only was it a crystal clear word, but you knew exactly what he meant. You can pack a lot of meaning into that one word, especially when you’re 4.

Weihnachtsmann.

I’m sure we had more touching moments and instances where we communicated more or better, but this moment is etched into my brain. There was no way to imagine in that moment – and we’d been to the hospital multiple times in the previous three months due to his breathing problems – that it would be a little more than six months until he went to hospice and a little more than nine months before he died. Eight months from that moment, I was asking if there was any way we could speed up his death, because it was such hell watching him fade away like that.

We only had him five years but he keeps coloring our lives. I recycled a gift bag today while wrapping gifts and realized his name was still on the tag. Had to make sure to remove that fast before causing a Christmas morning faux pas. Emma’s computer died and I had it at a computer shop a few times in the last week. The bike ride took me by the cemetery so I stopped, even though I almost never go there. I brought a book to read to him and, as I left, I noted to myself that I had just read a story to my dead son. That’s not part of the usual Christmas routine. But I don’t know what else to do.

The senior home puts up their Santa every year, so I see it on the rare instances I go down that street. Like so many other things – young boys his age, the guest room, the cemetery – I avoid walking down the street that took us to the day care most of the time. But it’s not a bad place to walk. And they do have a really nice Santa on display.

Merry Christmas everyone.