Merry Christmas! Sitting here with all the lights off, presents nestled under the tree, children sleeping, I look at our Christmas tree with its quiet white lights. The snow is gently falling outside and all the world seems to be sleeping.
Our second Christmas without you seems like the first. Last year you were gone just a few weeks before the holiday and everything was a blur for awhile. But this year is different. It’s our sweet baby Caleb’s first Christmas yet you aren’t here to share it with us... again. It’s strange how life now feels normal by myself, without you by my side experiencing it all together. Sometimes I really hate that but I know that this is the way things are now and I’m finally at a place where I know it’s okay.
I miss you terribly still. Missing all the little things about you hurts but now there is something new. The other day we were listening to music and I jokingly sang in an operatic voice- just as you did all the time to the kids. Laughing at myself, I asked our oldest kids if I sounded like how you did when you would joke around but they couldn’t remember that about you anymore. A lot of their own memories of you are fading and I am trying to keep those memories alive the best I can. Remember how I promised you I wouldn’t let the kids forget you when we were driving in the car that one chilly day in April? That promise will never be broken, even when a lot of their memories are going to be the memories of stories I tell them.
This Christmas season there have been so so many people who have helped keep that promise to you. One of your talented students made some amazing and absolutely unique memory boxes for the kids and me, just like you wanted. A loving friend spent a lot of time sewing blankets out of your shirts for the kids to open tomorrow morning— a present to them, from you, just like you wanted. Another former student anonymously spent the past 12 days delivering gifts and a cute nativity set to help remind us about Christ and His joyous birth, just like you always reminded us. So many people have blessed our family with many different types of service to help our family during this Christmas season, and just as you feel, my words fall short of the gratitude I feel in my heart.
The joy of the season runs strong in our home— our kids are sure to make it so!— and this year I’ve felt a deeper connection to how my Savior’s love really works in my life. I still feel such embedded loss and sorrow that you are not here, and although I’ve tried several ways to “remedy” my heart’s pain, I have only found one solution. The pain can’t be taken away but joy can reside right in my heart at the same time. Only this has helped me find peace, and I celebrate the birth of Jesus in a new light this year: grateful that He continues to let me ache for you but that He also helps me to choose joy in my life. It’s a strange but beautiful collision, one that will slowly build a perfect heart one day. And that is what I give to you this Christmas, Tony: a renewed desire to allow myself to feel pain and let myself be happy and have joy as well as our family moves forward together.
I love you, and I hope you get to see the beaming faces of our kids tomorrow morning and hear their squeals as they enjoy a beautiful and joyous Christmas Day.
Love always,
Erica
