I know lots of people love holiday cards. They like planning their family picture and ordering them and sending them out to grace refrigerators everywhere. I used to really enjoy them. We kept talking about how nice it would be to send one out one year, but just didn’t really get around to it.
Now I regret that a bit. Because I don’t know that I will ever be able to send out a holiday card again.
Because whatever picture we send won’t be a picture of our family. If I send a picture of the four of us when Rowan was alive, it’s a really old picture. It’s not what we look like now. If I send one of Doc, Little Bird, and I…well, someone will always be missing from that photo.
So every time I get a card in the mail I start sobbing. I see all these happy families in all different sizes and shapes and I just grieve for the fact that my happy little family won’t be together like that again. Rowan won’t be sitting on his Dad’s shoulders while Little Bird and I are kicking up snow or some other bull shit holiday meme. No ugly sweaters.
Maybe one day I’ll feel like I will look at a family picture and feel like it’s “ok” or “right”…but I think that years away.
Christmas cards just remind me of why the holidays are so hard and all the beautiful Christmas memories I won’t ever get with my son.
Last Christmas, my son’s chest was open. I could see his lungs and heart. He was paralyzed. He wasn’t breathing on his own. He had 13 different tubes stuck in him.
That’s the only Christmas I got.
It’s heartbreaking.
That’s all.
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