Lights

Another Christmas done.

I’m a planner by nature (and kind of by profession) so I get a certain kick out of the pre-Christmas. Yes, it’s exhausting with all the things and being the only one to do it all, but I have my spreadsheets for the gifts to make sure that there are pretty much even numbers by category of gift, and I have my December calendar where everyone gets a colour so I can make sure I know when all the seasonal events are for each person and plan weekends of family festivities around them throughout the month because God forbid the newest teen says we are missing out on the “magic”. Bless her, it’s difficult realising now you’re older Christmas will never feel the same as it did when you were six, no matter what you do.

Even the first year Steve died I didn’t hate Christmas. I don’t find it without it’s challenges, but deep down, I always have been always will be a Christmas lover.

But here’s where the season gets me. It’s the constant narrative of “it’s not about the presents it’s about being with the ones you love.” Because short of a trip to the afterlife, whatever that may look like, that’s not something I can deliver. Full stockings, yes, apparently magically refilling tin of gingerbread by the bread bin, yes. All the ones they love, nope.

As always, it’s the things outside my control that threaten to wobble me. When we get to the end of Christmas Day and the kids are winding down and I think, was it good enough? Did I make it special enough? Will they remember it as being fun? Were they disappointed that it didn’t meet their expectations? Because I want them to have a happy Christmas, but I can’t make it what it was before.

I’m usually pretty good at not overthinking these things. But Christmas evening I always doubt myself. Because I can’t give them memories of everyone sat around the table, because there will always be one person not there. I know that at least two of them remember the Christmases before, and I know they were better, purely because there wasn’t someone missing, and two parents bringing the fun is double the fun. And I start to slip.

Not that we have ever had a bad Christmas since he died. There have always been lights and decorations and new baubles and hot chocolates and extra traditions and matching pjs and presents and grandparents and games and endless amounts of party food to graze on. The kids have had Christmas designed around them, pretty much. 

But still, I question myself. Maybe it is because we get to the end of the day and there’s no one else there to affirm the success. Maybe it’s because the one thing that all the lessons and adverts and morals talk about is being with the ones you love, and I can’t give that to them.

Christmas evening got me to wondering whether, when the kids are grown and have partners of their own, they will start making their own Christmas traditions, or experience the Christmases of other families and realise how quiet the Christmases of their childhood were, and find them lacklustre and dull, looking back. Because, for a multitude of reasons, we aren’t surrounded by lots of relatives, extended family, friends who are as if. And while, for other reasons, it perhaps suits them to have the facility to opt in and opt out of parts of the day, to not have a busy house full of people with their own expectations of what the special celebration should look like, I still question whether what we have made in the last five Christmases, despite all the things I have tried to put in place, is really enough.

And despite sitting in the glow of the fairy lights that I go in the loft to fetch, and painstakingly unravel, and climb on a stepstool to hang because I’m short, when I get to thinking about what we are told Christmas should be, it feels a little darker. Because maybe I’m not giving them that. And maybe one day they will feel sad about it. Another thing to feel sad about.

We had a lovely Christmas, waking up in their own beds as they insist upon, with breakfast shaped like snowmen and adorned with sprinkles, plenty of gifts under the tree, and silly games with the grandparents. But I always end contemplative and questioning, once the oldies depart and the kids drift to their rooms, despite my best efforts not to. And there’s no one there to reflect back to me that I’m doing ok.

Last year, I started a new Boxing Day tradition, having been very aware the year before that the post-Christmas drop that everyone experiences can feel like a mountainous plummet when there are no promises of cosy “family” time like you used to have, or like you imagine everyone else in the world having only exacerbating your own loneliness. And we went to see the light display at Leeds Castle on Boxing Day evening.

It was great, precisely because everyone else was having family time, and our differently shaped family enjoyed a much emptier walk around the light exhibits than in the more popular pre-Christmas rush, and next to no queues at the food trucks. It gave us something to look forward to the day after, rather than everything being done and gone after the day before. And us not being surrounded by extended family meant that we had nowhere else to be – so rather than have the lack of something heightened, we used it as an opportunity to be different. Because we are different, and we feel it.

So this Boxing Day I booked the light display at the Bedgebury Pinetum, and as we wandered around, despite it being a busier venue than the year before, I felt lighter. And not just because the glittering glowing rainbow kaleidoscope of shine and sparkle in the woods was so spectacular, although that helped. And not just because the music they picked for each display was so beautifully emotive, although that helped. But because I wasn’t questioning whether it was enough despite us being without, because we were where we had decided to be based on us being who we are.

And I realised that for me, the next right thing is to try to take what we have, and embrace the different. Yes, the majority of people will be enjoying extended families, visiting aunts, uncles, cousins, both sides of the family. They will have big together traditions that my kids don’t. But we will have our light shows. They will remember their favourites, and that they are – for once – allowed to get whatever they want from the food trucks without looking at the prices, where the queues are shorter because most people are staying in that night.

These moments of beauty, as lights chase each other through the pine forest, choreographed to the melodies and harmonies, as fire bowls cast shadows directed by choral song, become almost transcendent. I am sure we are surrounded by “whole” families, but we don’t notice them, because our gaze is cast elsewhere. We aren’t reminded of what we are missing, but are enraptured by what we are experiencing in the moment.

And these are the moments that I need. They are my lights in the darkness of death and grief and bereavement and solo parenting and being alone.

They might look like stars and fireflies in the enormity of a forest, they might look like bartering in the Marrakech Medina in Moroccan Arabic, they might look like chasing two small shih tzus down the beach in Guernsey in the company of people who make space to love us, they might look like Just Dance competitions, or nights binge watching Only Murders in the Building trying to guess who did it this time, or driving Ferraris, or crying at Les Mis together, or spending hours watching otters squeak or squirrel monkeys chase because they are the current favourites.

I love Christmas. But by the end it can make me feel small, because I never know if I can make it big enough on my own to make up for what is missing.

And that’s why I need my Boxing Day light show, to get me back out there and keep me going. Christmas is just a day, and maybe ours won’t live up to what they could have been. But there are still lights to be found in the darkness, and the lights shine brighter when you’ve seen how dark it can get.

And something to look forward to, time to marvel at beauty surrounding your senses, reminds you to keep chasing the light, to keep hunting out those moments when there is sparkle, even if only fleeting.

I know for sure there will be dark days again, because the cards we have been dealt are not the easiest ones to play. I know for sure I will always question whether the kids’ lives are bright enough and wonder whether I could do more, because it’s how I’m wired. But I also know for sure that I can chase the moments where we marvel at the beauty of what stands before us whether that is standing in awe at a light show or basking in the light of the abroad sun or catching the twinkle reflected in the eyes of a child who is happy in their present, just for now. And these might be at times that the rest of the world doesn’t see, and that we only do because of what has happened. 

But sometimes it feels lighter to make peace with that.