Christmas
This year I became profoundly aware that hope is a privilege. Where there is hope there is potential.
This wasn’t the first Christmas without Saunder. Last year Saunder worked over the Christmas holiday. I held onto hope that he would sneak away from his responsibilities at Lutsen Resort and walk through our front door and surprise us. When he FaceTimed us at 6pm on Christmas night dressed in his chef coat and in the dim lights of The Strand restaurant at Lutsen Resort hope faded and I appreciated the handsome face on the screen in front of us which was, of course, still smiling.
I’ll never look at hope in the same light again. I would give anything to have carried hope into this Christmas season but it could never reach its potential. Saunder would never walk through our door and that felt truly awful.
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I crammed all of our gift shopping and wrapping into Thursday, December 21st. Same day commencement and completion was a reaction plan. On November 29th I walked into The Shops of the Galleria. I embraced the holiday music, the decorations, and the wonderful energy of shoppers. It was everything I had envisioned and had consciously prepared myself to experience. I was fully immersed in the magic and felt the joy of the season! I saw stockings hung in the Pottery Barn window and felt the flutter of excitement to hang our 3 stockings!!…. And then my insides seized. Two stockings. This year we would hang 2 stockings. We would fill 2 stockings. As I was struck by disbelief I was also hit with disappointment in myself! How could I not have thought of this until now?! Standing in a packed mall with no easy way to escape.
This is life. No amount of talk-preparation, manifesting, meditating, praying, exercises envisioning various scenarios will prepare me for these moments. Eight months has not prepared me for these moments. Firsts continue to happen. I can not possibly run all the scenarios. There is endless potential in the what if column and with it endless opportunities to be blasted by the reality wrecking ball. It is doubtlessly daunting and it made me recoil until the final hour. December 21st was the final hour for us.
I packed our calendar with excitement from December 22nd to December 24th. We had family style pizza night with Josh and Anne, a wonderful visit with Jason’s family, brunch with good friends followed by a Christmas Eve day Vikings game and game night at the Kerfoot’s. We were fully invested in it; Appreciating the beauty and gifts of togetherness in the spirit of the season… atop a foundation of longing. Longing never leaves.
Jason and I were whelmed with longing on Christmas day. We surrendered ourselves to its gentleness and everything it symbolized… deep love, missing, loneliness, sorrow, regrets, amazement, gratitude… it represented everything 20 years gifted us and all the dreams we had that were snuffed out. In the past 8 months Jason and I rarely mirror one another in our timing and expression of grief. It was a gift to have each other to hold on Christmas day and no expectations of one another. The other gift was the gentle landing of Avery and Asher’s grief on Christmas day.
I found comfort in cooking. When I’m in the kitchen I’m flooded with memories of Saunder and my conversations. We had so many meaningful connections while I was cooking and while eating. His last visit home he shared that he missed my cooking the most. I know I made him proud on Christmas day. I served white chocolate raspberry scones for breakfast… a recipe that I made often for our family and Saunder later made them for his Lutsen family. Dinner was braised short ribs with pea and radish risotto, scalloped potatoes, and Kate Kerfoot’s salad and salad dressing. Every bit of it was infused with Saunder… recipes from the cook book he gifted me or know favorites of his we had shared them together.
I crawled into be at 7:30pm ready to put the season behind me. Despite physical and emotional exhaustion at the close of the day my thoughts journeyed through the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Reflections on the past Christmas season recognized devastation, longing, and disappointment; memory making moments with wonderful new company for the holiday and an unexpected lesson in gratitude… What a gift it is to be hopeful.