Ghost of Christmas Past

Don’t you hate when happy memories turn into painful reminders?  I know I am not alone in struggling through the holidays, there are ghosts everywhere.  

Christmas 1986

It seemed like everything changed in one year, the last “normal” Christmas my family had was 1999.  By 2000 my dad was sick and while no one wanted to say it, the prospect of it being his last Christmas (it was) found its way into everything

Growing up Christmas was always the same, the 23^rd would be full of cleaning and baking, that night the beans would be set out to soak for the homemade baked beans and last minute preparations would be made.  The 24^th would be cooking, cooking, cooking!  Chicken wings, a lasagna, a ham, a turkey…everything.  We would head to church for the early service then it would be back to our house for our annual party.  Having 4 brothers and sisters made for a packed house to begin with but by the time it was time to head back to All Saint’s Episcopal for the 11PM service it seemed that half of the town had passed through our doors. 

Church was always great too, something about the smell of the candles blending with the smell of the wooden pews…I don’t think I will ever smell that again.  The choir would sing all the same songs, the organ the loudest it has been all year and one voice in the choir a little louder than the others (Amanda, you know who I am talking about!) and we would head home with “Joy To The World” still ringing in our ears. 

Well, my dad is long gone, that house is long gone, and as it often happens, the church has gone through so many changes that while I may remember the building the faces inside would be foreign.  I know this is all part of growing up but I feel like other people got to space these things out.  My dad died, we sold the house and a leadership change in the church one right after the other.  There wasn’t much time to recover from one change before the next one happened.

Every Christmas I think about a big bellied man with a distinctive beard.  Someone who embodied everything that Christmas was about: faith, love, family.  My dad was better than Santa.  Even when we had nothing we had everything.  Each Christmas Eve he would put the star on the advent Christmas tree and read “The Night Before Christmas”.  My dad was Christmas.  While I really love celebrating with the girls and each year it gets more and more exciting with them there is still a hole in my heart that will never be filled. 

Yesterday we had the new annual family Christmas at my stepmother’s (and her husband’s) house.  It was great to see everyone and watch the kids open gifts and pig out on cookies but I left with such a heavy heart.  My dad would have loved this (well not my stepmother’s husband, that would have been awkward) but he never got the chance.  My kids will never know him; they will have a totally different relationship with Christmas.  All I can do is tell them about how great of a man he was, keep him alive in that way, but man, it’s hard.

This will be the 14^th Christmas without my dad and to someone who has never lost a parent or someone close it may seem a bit extreme for me to still be so heartbroken after all this time but one never truly gets over something like that and special days just magnify the pain you carry with your daily.  If you do know someone who has suffered such a loss, especially in the time since last Christmas, please make it a point to reach out.  Let them know that you are there for them and that you are keeping them and their loved one in your thoughts.  Be sure they know that their pain doesn’t make you uncomfortable, they don’t have to hide.  Speak their loved ones name freely, there is nothing worse than feeling like everyone has forgotten.

Christmas is still a happy time for me, as it is for most people who are still grieving, but there are moments of tears and pain but that’s OK.  I am not ruining my holidays by being sad,  I am honoring my father by remembering.

(N)o Christmas Tree, (N)o Christmas Tree...

2014 will be remembered in our home for many reasons, most of them good but Christmas 2014, well this will forever be the year of the second Christmas tree.

Insert Tree here (take this morning)

 After getting a late start on things last year and having a black cloud darkened holidays in 2013 I was excited to get a jump on Christmas this year.  The Saturday after Thanksgiving we loaded into the car and headed out in search of the perfect tree.  It took some convincing to get Will to even join us so I wasn’t going to push the issue and insist on a live tree farm but I’ve had precut down trees in the past and never had a problem so I didn’t even give it a second thought. 

  

It wasn’t really that grand an event: I found the height I wanted, looked to bald spots, gave the dude $50, he cut the stump down and Will tied it to the roof.  Less than 10 minutes later we were home.  We did all the things years of live tree having Christmases have taught us, used boiling water, added a little Sprite…screwed it in and we thought we were good.  If the way the house smelled was any indication we were bound to have a wonderful Christmas, the smell of pine smacked you in the face the moment you walked in.

Fast-forward…the girls and I decorated….fast-forward again…one morning I went to water our beautiful tree before work when suddenly it toppled over.  All I remember is screaming “it’s falling!” and heading a loud crash and glass breaking.  Then next thing you know I’m covered in pine needles and tears.  I thought that was the worst thing that would happen to that poor tree, but I was wrong.

Last night, a week before Christmas, the tree was thrown out.  It never took any water, ever.  The few needles left on the tree were now brown and brittle.  It was a fire hazard just standing there in the girls’ playroom.  I’ve been asked if I think the fall broke the tree.  Yes.  Yes, the fall 100% broke the tree; it must have sustained a concussion and forgot how to drink…we will never know what killed our tree (we declined the autopsy) but we knew there was no way we were letting the girls open gifts under a bare tree trunk so 2014 will be the year that we had to buy a second Christmas tree.  

Touchdown!

  

The anxiety of being only two out of 68,000 sent him to dry heave in the bathroom.

The inability to regulate his body temperature sent him shopping in Christmas crowds for the perfect cold weather gear.

The knowledge of loud PA music and musket shots prompted him to find ear protection.

Being by my side when I finally saw my first Patriots game at Gillette Stadium made all of his extra preparation worth it.    

He double checked my layers, my gloves my hat.  He made sure we had a ride there and back to avoid traffic.  When walking by parking lots he put himself between me and oncoming cars so I wouldn’t be the one to be hit if someone wasn’t paying attention.  In a crowd he grabbed my hand and took charge making sure we stayed together, showing no signs of anxiety being around so many people.

Every big play made on the field brought his eyes to me, he didn’t miss a moment of my excitement.  A blocked field goal for a touchdown, me; interception, me; Brady scrambling for a first down, me.  Was I warm enough?  Had I had enough hot chocolate?  Did I want to take a picture?  Everything in his power to make my day perfect he did.

No he didn’t feel guilty.  He didn’t think he owed me something because I got such amazing tickets from work.  We hadn’t fought over something stupid that he was trying to make up for he was just happy to see me happy.

He is not the same man I married and he isn’t cured in fact, it is taking him a few days to recover from using all of that strength and self-control on Sunday.  For an afternoon I came first.  Not to the kids, not to my cat, not at work but when it was just me and my husband it wasn’t about TBIs or PTSD or anything other than the two of us enjoying an afternoon of football and being together. 

Last year I didn’t know if he even liked me, this year there is no question that he loves me, really truly lay-him-self-down-in-traffic-for-me loves me.  How about that?

What a Year It's Been, Life After the Army

It’s a strange thing thriving in a marriage that was all but over just a year ago. 

I look back at where we were at this time last year.  We pulled into Massachusetts, home, after 7 years away.  Back to where the faces were familiar but none of them really knew me.  They thought they knew the struggles of the past 7 years but really couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like. 

When I think about my very first positive pregnancy test – it was the most exciting day of my life, everything changed that day but there was a black cloud.  I did what every suspicious woman does, did a double take at the calendar, ran to the store, peed on a stick and waited.  When that “pregnant” popped up I screamed and jumped and cried and turned to share my excitement/fear/love with…my dog.  I was alone, again.  Will had returned from deployment and two weeks later was gone for another two weeks.  He learned he was going to be a father 3,000 miles away from the baby.  

This memory, the mixed emotions of that day and so many others like it, will stay with me forever.  Like many military spouses there is a little bit of sadness in every happy occasion while we were dependents.  The end of our army life doesn’t change the past.  I wouldn’t want to take the army out of our lives but it wasn’t all homecomings and Ranger Balls.  (haha balls)  The people I was now surrounding myself with daily will never understand any of this.  On top of this there was the other thing, the whole reason we were home, the injury. 

If I had a dollar for every, “everything happens for a reason”, “it’s all part of the plan” and “but the good news is that you’re home” I wouldn’t be stuck in a soul sucking job. 

The injury that destroyed the man I married and left me with some unrecognizable shell of a human, someone who wanted to rejoin the world but didn’t know how or was afraid to try.  Looking back on the move, I posted pictures on Facebook and updates of our progress from one coast to the other.  When I look at the video of Addie seeing snow for the first time in West Virginia all I can think of is the look on Will’s face when I told him to stop throwing snowballs at my window because he was about to break it.  The way he morphed into the monster I didn’t know.  How scared I felt as he marched over to me, bracing for impact sure this would be the moment he would finally hit me.  The humiliation as he stuffed snow down my back in anger just to be sure my day of travel would be as uncomfortable as possible.   Driving through tears was nothing new to me by this point on our trip.  That is a story I would never share with my family because that is not the man I married but this is the baggage that I carried across the country with me.

As our life together improves daily I don’t feel bad about almost leaving.  How could anyone stay married when marriage looked like that?  I was in constant fight or flight mode with one priority, my daughters.  I think it’s important for me to keep these memories, I haven’t seen that monster in months, not since he walked up to me and told me that he was sick of being miserable all the time.  It’s like those words killed that monster, much like Dorothy he had the power to go home the whole time but he just had to believe. 

I have let go of the guilt for that period of time.   Everything I did, everything I planned, every thought was done to protect myself and my kids. 

But here we are, a year and a day since returning home.  I always said the first year home would be make or break and it was.  Together we are working on what seems to be the beginning of our happily ever after.  There are still so many things to work on, like any marriage.  I do know that ours needs extra TLC, this is what comes with his injury but we are both committed to being the best versions of ourselves.  

We are far from done but we made it this far – both scarred and changed but we are here.  Together.

100%

100%

That is total.  After 100% there can be no more.  Last week a letter came in the mail with Will’s new compensation from the VA and in it were new ratings - he is now considered to be 100% disabled as far as the VA is concerned.  We were pretty shocked, we weren’t expecting this to just randomly show up but there it was.  A split second, a bad judgment, a momentary lapse almost 5 years ago sent a vehicle rolling down a river bank in the middle of nowhere Iraq and left my husband 100% disabled.

Of course the pay is much better; the jump from 90 to 100% is a little ridiculous.  The first check hit 2 days after we got the letter and – well it was nice.  He can’t work, he’s obviously earned this money so I have no guilt in him receiving it but in all honesty I don’t want it.

They can take it back, all of it.  Take back the CRSC and the back pay (well technically, they still have that so I guess they would just keep it).  Take everything back and just give me my husband back.  I used to call him my jester, I want that back.

But we are lucky, he came home.  I never let myself forget how incredibly lucky we are.

Mourning is tricky when the person you are mourning is still alive.  But I am still, after all these years, mourning the man who didn’t come home from that deployment.  The man I didn’t see when we first locked eyes at SeaTac airport.  The Ranger who I sent off not even 2 months before.  I’ve somewhat been at peace with this for a while, the out of nowhere gut punches are fewer and further between than ever but with this new rating they all came back. 

He is never getting better.  Ever. 

Of course I already knew this.  But just like the first time I saw “not fit for duty” on an actual piece of paper this killed me.  I can’t really talk to him about this, that’s the last thing he needs so I am just kind of carrying it around.  I had a hugely ugly/snotty cry in the car last week and if I let my mind wonder it finds these incredibly dark places but I am trying to look at the bright side.  They pay, some tax breaks in my state, some other things.  This new rating is a good thing and he is still the same person he was the day before we got the letter.  

Just like you never really know what being a grown up is supposed to feel like I have no idea how to be the wife of a disabled vet.  Just like I have been doing most of my adult life I will just keep faking it until I make it.