I feel sorry for unchosen Christmas trees
On Christmas Eve, as I run by Christmas tree lots, I feel sorry for the scrawny trees not chosen to sit in someones living room or great room, slowly dying, decorated with ornaments that mean something to the people who carefully place them on the branches. I want to buy all those scrawny trees, just like I want to take all the homeless dogs home and how I wanted my kids to play with the unpopular kids. In other words, I feel sorry for the underdog. And I feel sorry for every person who is alone on Christmas with no one to visit them.
Christmas isn't always a happy time as one gets older. It should be because we have so much. But sometimes it is about what we have lost and the people that are no longer with us. Sometimes it is too filled with the memories of what it used to be before it got so commercial and before it was bad to say Merry Christmas instead of happy holidays. The older one gets the more it is about saying hello and then goodbye to family members who come to share the time but then must go back to their lives. No matter how much you want to hang on to the days, you can't and they slip by and into the next year. If we are lucky, we will be around to do it all again and again.
I really try to savor each Christmas and keep the tree up till New Years Day. When I was a kid people stopped by without needing an invite or without calling first, during the entire week between Christmas and New Years. That was when my dad drank a lot and then when he quit, they no longer came. My dad is gone now but I think of him at Christmas and the pictures I would get from my sister of my dad and mom at her house on Christmas Eve - my dad with his funny grin and tilted head - often with some sort of weird cap on that someone had knitted for my sister.
This Christmas I was aware of the grief of my friends, as well as some of my own. One had lost her dad and her mother in law in the space of 6 months. I saw the sadness in her eyes when she came over for our open house and I noticed the difference in how people grieve. Her husband wanted to move on - it wasn't that he didn't care, but he had dealt with it in a different way. My neighbor's husband had died in September. She was not into the celebration this year. Her daughter told her she needed to move on but she couldn't. And it is all okay - we are all different. I thought of my own dad, dead for a second Christmas. I thought of my mother in law with Alzheimer's and how she always sent us cookies each Christmas and Stollen, a German fruitcake. We never liked the fruitcake but would give anything if she could make one for us again. I thought of my father in law whose mind is intact but his body is weakened by a stroke he had a few months ago. He spent Christmas day, his 93rd birthday, in a nursing home, maybe remembering better Christmases. Knowing him though, he probably said to himself "what is, is". He is the most accepting and positive man I know.
On Christmas day, I visited my friend Bob who now has a trach and a ventilator and is confined mostly to bed. He has ALS but last year he was still running with us and all he can do now is ask us about our runs. "How far did you go today?" he asks. We always tell him and we always tell him it was a good run because any run is a good run when you will never do it again. But Bob is cheerful even as his wife sits and cries. Instead of running with Bob, we learned to suction him and trouble shoot his ventilator. Christmas for them is also about losses. And it is unspoken that this may be Bob's last Christmas. But then again, maybe it won't be.
Maybe it is good that we are aware of our losses. Maybe it makes this time of year more precious and we try to hold on to it. Maybe that is why I feel sorry for the unchosen trees that didn't get a chance to shine. I think of this as I run out there in the cold mornings and see the discarded Christmas trees in the snowbanks waiting for garbage pick up. Their moment was bright but short lived.
There are still some houses decorated and some chosen trees still are lighted up in the windows Jack and I pass. I feel happy for my memories, for Christmases past and those to come. I can still make snow angels in the sparkly white snow. I can still run. Life goes on. Maybe I shouldn't feel so bad for those trees.
Christmas isn't always a happy time as one gets older. It should be because we have so much. But sometimes it is about what we have lost and the people that are no longer with us. Sometimes it is too filled with the memories of what it used to be before it got so commercial and before it was bad to say Merry Christmas instead of happy holidays. The older one gets the more it is about saying hello and then goodbye to family members who come to share the time but then must go back to their lives. No matter how much you want to hang on to the days, you can't and they slip by and into the next year. If we are lucky, we will be around to do it all again and again.
I really try to savor each Christmas and keep the tree up till New Years Day. When I was a kid people stopped by without needing an invite or without calling first, during the entire week between Christmas and New Years. That was when my dad drank a lot and then when he quit, they no longer came. My dad is gone now but I think of him at Christmas and the pictures I would get from my sister of my dad and mom at her house on Christmas Eve - my dad with his funny grin and tilted head - often with some sort of weird cap on that someone had knitted for my sister.
This Christmas I was aware of the grief of my friends, as well as some of my own. One had lost her dad and her mother in law in the space of 6 months. I saw the sadness in her eyes when she came over for our open house and I noticed the difference in how people grieve. Her husband wanted to move on - it wasn't that he didn't care, but he had dealt with it in a different way. My neighbor's husband had died in September. She was not into the celebration this year. Her daughter told her she needed to move on but she couldn't. And it is all okay - we are all different. I thought of my own dad, dead for a second Christmas. I thought of my mother in law with Alzheimer's and how she always sent us cookies each Christmas and Stollen, a German fruitcake. We never liked the fruitcake but would give anything if she could make one for us again. I thought of my father in law whose mind is intact but his body is weakened by a stroke he had a few months ago. He spent Christmas day, his 93rd birthday, in a nursing home, maybe remembering better Christmases. Knowing him though, he probably said to himself "what is, is". He is the most accepting and positive man I know.
On Christmas day, I visited my friend Bob who now has a trach and a ventilator and is confined mostly to bed. He has ALS but last year he was still running with us and all he can do now is ask us about our runs. "How far did you go today?" he asks. We always tell him and we always tell him it was a good run because any run is a good run when you will never do it again. But Bob is cheerful even as his wife sits and cries. Instead of running with Bob, we learned to suction him and trouble shoot his ventilator. Christmas for them is also about losses. And it is unspoken that this may be Bob's last Christmas. But then again, maybe it won't be.
Maybe it is good that we are aware of our losses. Maybe it makes this time of year more precious and we try to hold on to it. Maybe that is why I feel sorry for the unchosen trees that didn't get a chance to shine. I think of this as I run out there in the cold mornings and see the discarded Christmas trees in the snowbanks waiting for garbage pick up. Their moment was bright but short lived.
There are still some houses decorated and some chosen trees still are lighted up in the windows Jack and I pass. I feel happy for my memories, for Christmases past and those to come. I can still make snow angels in the sparkly white snow. I can still run. Life goes on. Maybe I shouldn't feel so bad for those trees.
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