Blue Christmas without You

     "I'll have a blue new Christmas without you"....played in my head today.  Last year Mom was ill so I did my best to make the house as festive as I could in between trips to the hospital and taking care of the usual crazy life that happens at this time of year.  Cards were left on the table.  Decorations were stranded somewhere in the middle of the transformation.  I was trapped between the worst event of my life and the sweetest day of the year.  My efforts were elsewhere at a hospital where I had to make Christmas still happen for a woman who would be "celebrating" her last one.  She made me promise to have our holiday even if it was five days after she had left us.  My mother always liked to challenge me and this was no exception. 
     A little boy has a birthday days after Christmas.   I still remember the day that I heard the due date and the thoughts that ran through my head.  Do not EVER let this child feel slighted by the shadow of the biggest day of the year.  So each year there is a celebration.  She made me promise that one as well.   No way was she was ruining last year's Star Wars theme...not for her little guy.  I can honestly say most of last year's season of good tidings was a blur for me.  I remember lots of snow.  Lots of rushing.  Lots of tears. 
     Then the floods happened.  The rains came this past year and took the trees and power with them.  My basement and all of its contents, including over forty years of holiday decorations... soaked.  Though bags and bags of many things have made their way to the trash...Christmas has waited for a day I was brave enough to face it.  Yesterday's holiday magic is still holding a spell over me so today was that day.  The artificial trees are destroyed.  Today, we purchased a fir.  It is full of sticky sap and smells of wintry magic.  Most lights were destroyed as well but a few packs of red/green combo lights were safe so for the first time in my entire life the tree is not in all white nor in a magical spectrum of colors.   I have said goodbye to things I have seen each and every year since I am old enough to remember.  An Ipod set to Christmas music kept us company as we dug through boxes and filled up trash bags.  A song came on.  A song that would bring my mother to tears in an instant.  A song that needed to be switched off immediately should she ever be in your midst.  I stood near the tree with the reflex to change it and then realized I no longer had to...only for it TO SWITCH TO THE NEXT SONG on its own.  I paused mid-reach with an ornament...and realized she was with me.  I am sure she is proud that she has passed on the tradition of nagging about ornament placement.  I gave the talk to my daughter just moments before.  She is smiling as I say, "Don't put two snowmen together silly...you have the whole tree!".  
     Life brings changes.  We miss people.  We find people.  We watch our little ones grow too quickly.  We watch our old people as they slip away.  Christmas is a time like no other.  The noise of the world quiets for a bit and we reflect on the lives we have lived and the pathways we have found for our tomorrows.  We smile a little bit bigger.  We cherish a little bit harder.  We forgive  a little bit easier.  We wrap up a year and prepare for the freshness of the upcoming new one.  We remember our childhoods with fond traditional memories and create new ones with the children we are blessed with.  There is a little bit of magic to be had by us all and it comes with the scent of the forest and the twinkles of the stars.  This challenge of the new has brought my biggest obstacle and my biggest success.  My tree is up and it's quite lovely...I think even Mom would approve!