Christmas Hallow

I’m not the first person that’s uttered the words, “It’s just not the same without you,” but it’s not.

Christmas changed. We changed. You changed. Lights exchanged for dimmed corners. Different shaped firs in and out of old stands every December. Old decorations thrown away. Homemade projects long forgotten, rotting in a landfill.

All of this flits in and out of my mind as the lights of this year’s tree flicker, making my eyes go in and out of focus. Holidays meant something at one point, but maybe I just lost that boy twelve years ago.

We made due. When we ate Thanksgiving dinner, a two plate affair, it was on cardboard boxes one year. Later, no Christmas decorations, except for a tree and nativity. Didn’t watch the ball drop, only a quick hug and a kiss before midnight. You always said that was all you needed. You just needed me and I you.

But then you died.

I’ve been focusing on Christmas as the festival of lights this year.

Houses draped in luminous bulbs. Homes filled with radiance. Brightness everywhere. Light to chase out the darkness without and within. I’ve always loved strings of lights, but even now as I seek them out, they can’t make me care.

It’s like this for everything, every holiday, every milestone, every birthday. I can’t share it. It does not matter. Christmas is just a casualty in a long line of wrecked days that cannot be recovered.

They say it gets better. Maybe “it” does. But in the chill of the December air, as I walk through the frosty grass that crunches under my shoes, I carry a burning ache for a love I had—my mother’s love.

It’s a love that defines this season: Mary, a woman who my own mother admired and adored. And she adored her for all the things that weren’t normal. For her strength to achieve the impossible. For her will to do what she must. For this woman whose life changed in an instant for a child out of wedlock.

All of this wrapped up in the mystery of a young woman millenniums ago and how that resonated in my mother’s broken, ravaged body. How it must have still echoed in her as I looked on at her shriveled husk in the hospice, and her wiry hand grasping mine those last few days.
My mind lingers on those, ironically, sunny days, sitting feet away while she slipped farther and farther. And now in the deepness of winter, I nurse the hot burning of everything I lost in a week, almost three years ago. Regret. Despair. Loss.

I still haven’t made sense out of any of this and I refuse to, in the midst of gingerbread houses, poinsettias, and candy canes. I still can’t sing Christmas carols or choke out a hymn at mass. Wishing someone “Happy Holidays” can be an effort.

But what I do have is this overwhelming feeling of love lost and the only place I can find that void  filled is in my own daughter . . . my son.

And maybe that is enough.

Alexander Pyles holds an MA in Philosophy from Franciscan University and an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. When not actively parenting, he writes, reads, watches, and breathes science fiction. He resides in Illinois with his wife, daughter, and son. He has contributed in the past to the Shoeless Banshee with his piece Dad likes you powerful, independent, just as you are. You can find more of his thoughts on his website, pylesofbooks.com, and follow him on twitter @Pylesofbooks.

Photo credit: Alexander Pyles