As they leave work Friday my coworkers wish me a Merry Christmas. Margot's first Christmas. So exciting, they say. They tell me to enjoy it. They know about Joseph--in fact, two of them have also lost babies--but they don't know he died on Christmas. They don't know this is the worst time of year. They don't know that it still feels wrong to say "merry" Christmas, and how much of an internal struggle I'm having that I want Margot's Christmases to be merry, and I want my own Christmases to be merry again someday, but I just can't imagine how that will be. I want her to have years and years of merry christmases, like I had 30 years of wonderful christmases before Joseph died. I feel lucky this year, in a way, that she's too little to really understand Christmas. Like Carrie said in MellyBelly's previous thread, I talk to her about her brother, I show her Joseph's ornaments on the tree, but she doesn't understand yet, and I wonder if I will stop talking so much about him when she's old enough to know. I just don't know what it's going to be like going forward.

Oh man! Burning Eye, this sucks. Plain and simply miserable. These days and weeks leading up to the anniversary are the worst and when you mix the holidays with them, it's . . . . .totally overwhelming. I'm sorry. Sorry you have to do this at all, sorry you have to do two of the hardest things together, sorry Joseph isn't here with you. And it doesn't matter how rotten it is because you have to do it all anyway. You have to grieve and you have to celebrate, all together. So. So, here are some tricks that I have used over the years.

1. Use some outside resources. What is happening in your community that you can plug into? Is there a zoo that does special things at Christmas? A museum? Plays? Giant toy store? It can be as simple as a night set aside to drive around and look at Christmas lights and go through a drive in to pick up hot chocolate. Relatives to ooh and aah over Margot and make much of her. What you want is someone else to make some Christmas magic so you don't have to do it all. A tradition that arises somewhat naturally out of things you all enjoy. A place, a time, you can just breathe and get tears in your eyes watching Margot's joy while you are also crying that Joseph is not here too.
We would go to my parents' house at 6:30am. They were up, my kids were up and had opened their presents at home. So, we did Christmas breakfast instead of a big Christmas dinner. It developed naturally and it suited all of us. And it gave me a break. I didn't have to do it all. I couldn't.

2. Do preparations at other times of the year. I liked to do crafts and read books with my kids when they were small. I would buy the Christmas magazines and gather other ideas at Christmastime (this was pre-internet days) and not look at them until maybe April. Then, after the kids were in bed, I would read them and get ideas and do all the prep work needed and put everything in a box to get out over Christmas. That way, I didn't have to think during the Holidays. The paper, the instructions, the inspiration was already done. Often, not always but often, the happy and excited thoughts I had would come back to me when I got these things out to do with my son and daughter. It helped with the "fake it until you make it".
I would buy holiday books at book fairs and used book stores and read them over and over until I was familiar with them and knew when to hush my voice, when to speed it up. Basically, to know what emotion was appropriate when. Because when I am swamped with grief I can't think of that. I can't . . . .think of how to pretend.

3. Write out a schedule for your emotions for the week(s). Sometime before Thanksgiving, I would panic looking at the next five weeks and thinking I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it. I can't be happy and cheerful and happy holidays for weeks and weeks. I can't. So I wouldn't. I would look at what each day held and see when I could be numb, when I could get away with just going through the motions, when I could cry and when I needed and wanted to be happy. Very scheduled. Mind you, I rarely kept to the schedule, but it helped me when I panicked or got lost in my head. I could keep the crying times and the happy times, knowing that they were set aside for me, that I didn't have to be strong and have it together always. It relieved a lot of the pressure I felt.

These are just tricks I've used to get by, that helped me over the years. I hope they can give you some ideas that work for you. My kids were 2yo and 3yo when my youngest died. They know of my sorrow and grief, but it is not really theirs. It didn't become their grief, which I was glad of. Being kids, the holidays excited them a lot and that covered up a good deal of my pain, eased it and hid it from them, which I was glad of too.

Wishing you and your family some peace and happiness, Burning Eye.

Thank you, Jill. You are so kind, and so wise. I hadn't really realized I was already expecting family and community to make a big deal out of Christmas for Margot (your advice #1) so I wouldn't really have to. (She goes to a church day care, so she got plenty of Christmasy activities there!) Maybe I need to vocalize that to our families, though.

And I really like the idea of setting aside times for emotions, even if I don't need them. We are trying to figure out what kinds of things, and what emotional space, we're wanting and needing on his stillbirthday, the 27th. We'll be at my family's house, so we can leave Margot with them if we want to go somewhere. I am always so frustrated, though, that it's the middle of winter and I'd really rather be outside someplace beautiful in nature.

Thinking about your second bit of advice, I think it's really wise to plan little crafts ahead of time that create happy memories with Margot so that when we pull them out to decorate at Christmas, we remember those happy memories.

So, thank you.

Burning Eye,

I also had 30 Christmases before the year we lost Christine. Christmas with grief as a backdrop is hard enough, as are the anniversaries of our babies. I can only imagine, though, how difficult it must be to combine the two.

As I try to let myself feel joy and happiness again, despite the void that is and will always be there, I often think of the last few lines of An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination:

"It's a happy life, but someone is missing. It's a happy life, and someone is missing."

I guess the only wisdom I can share, for this year but also years to come, is to let things unfold how they will. Around the holidays, for me that means less planning and fewer, or no, expectations. If I feel up to doing something, great, and if I don't, then I haven't set myself up to feel guilty about not wanting to do it after all, or for not feeling merry and joyful when I'm not. Even with Christine's older living siblings, who are at the age when everything about Christmas is magical, this works. And in some ways, it's been better to keep things simple this year and last.

One unexpected experience for me in losing Christine has been the connection that my daughter feels with her. She was not quite two when we lost Christine, but as her understanding and awareness of what happened has grown, she talks with me and asks questions about Christine nearly every day. It's really comforting, actually. I imagine that Joseph will always be an important part of the Christmas season for your family, and so maybe as the years pass and Margot grows, Christmas might become a special time for her of getting to know him, so to speak.

Thinking of you and hoping for a gentle, peaceful day on Christmas and Joseph's birthday.

This time of year is hard for me also. Thinking of Joseph, Margot and you this Christmas

Burning Eye,
I realize I am very late posting on this thread but I wanted to say that I completely understand where you are coming from when you say you are glad Margot isn't old enough to understand Christmas yet. Our first Christmas without Melanie we stayed home and had some cinnamon pull apart bread for breakfast and I'm pretty sure I cried the rest of the day. This year I felt relatively OK traveling to family so we did that but who knows how I will feel about leaving Melanie's ashes at home next year. Melanie was born in June so her anniversary is nowhere near Christmas but it's still such a hard holiday since it was my favorite and I know I will never be able to share it with her or see her face light up when she sees presents under the tree or the excitement of Christmas eve. I dread having to be cheerful and Christmas-y next year since Caroline will be aware of what is going on. I just wish our babies were here :(