Christmases with my mother were always an elaborate production. We made plans and lists and menus, weeks in advance. We baked for days. We listened to festive music and laughed at silly jokes while rolling melty chocolate truffles by hand. We baked these cherry Christmas cookies, and gingerbread, and a variety of icebox shortbreads. We made savoury shortbreads too, usually one with olives, and one with parmesan.
Mom always operated as if we had a massive family, overcooking for fifteen, let alone the seven that were likely to be seated around the table. I’ve inherited this madness. The Christmas menu always included a soup (usually some kind of pureed green vegetable, to offset the heaviness of the rest of the meal), turkey (we mixed it up with goose, duck or roast beef once in a while), two kinds of stuffing (a sausage one and a chestnut one), potatoes, brussels sprouts or another green veg, and, of course, baked sauerkraut (the only Serbian must-have side for turkey). There was always homemade horseradish, cranberry sauce and gravy.
Dessert usually included a Christmas pudding, some mincemeat tarts, and a chestnut cake of some kind. One year, I made a cranberry curd tart, another year a sticky toffee pudding. But chestnut cake was the classic, the favourite.
My mom died a month before Christmas in 2020. She had told me that she wasn’t going to make it to the holidays, and I had not believed her, but she gave me patient, precise instructions for what presents to get for my dad (a framed photo of her and my kid), the kid (a science kit with a proper lab coat and goggles, because he needed to graduate beyond the phase of just mixing spices at her kitchen sink and calling it science), and Colin (a magic book he really wanted).
“And for you, I have some ideas,” she told me one day in early November, from the hospital bed we had set up in her living room, because she could no longer go up and down the stairs to her bedroom.
She never got the chance to tell me what her idea was for me. It’s one of my many tiny heartbreaks. I know it would have been better than something I could think of for myself. She was a talented gift giver. Thoughtful, and a touch psychic about what people really needed and wanted, even if they weren’t aware of it themselves.
Do you remember that on December 21st, 2020, there was a great conjunction - an astronomical event in which Jupiter and Saturn are incredibly close in the sky? That night, they were only 0.1 degrees apart, the closest great conjunction since 1623.
A couple of weeks before Christmas that year, my cousins Maria (my generation, just a bit older) and Natalia (her young adult daughter) came over. They’re the only relatives from my mother’s side of the family who live in Canada. We were all freshly grieving, and still in shock about mom. That night, we somehow ended up in a spirited and hilarious conversation about the great conjunction, and what it might mean for all of us, astrologically and otherwise. My dad made a lot of jokes about “opening the gateway to the fifth dimension.” It was the most jovial I had seen him in many months. A blessing of a night.
That night, dad got the idea to get healing crystals for each of us, as Christmas Eve presents. He isn’t a “crystals guy,” and we don’t usually do presents on Christmas Eve, but this idea was truly inspired. Everyone got a couple of rocks for each person and a piece of paper explaining their meaning and supposed powers or healing properties. He named it “gifts from the fifth dimension,” and everyone got exactly what they needed. Mine was flourite, which brings harmony and balance, order to chaos. It can reduce stress and help you think, remember and focus.
I could tell that the end of the night was hard for my dad. Saying goodbye to us all, having to be alone in the house he had shared with mom for nearly 25 years, with all those memories surrounding him. But Christmas Eve that year felt like a sliver of hope that new traditions were possible, that joy was possible. It helped all of us reconvene the next day for Christmas and share some happy moments with just a little less heaviness. I was very grateful.
The next morning, the kid rushed into our bed, holding his over-stuffed Christmas stocking, and I really did feel lighter.
“Is Baka here?” he asked, while we played with his presents.
“No, but I wish that she was,” I said.
“I dreamed about her last night,” he told me.
“I’m glad she visited you,” I replied.
Somehow, we made it through that first Christmas without her. And in the years that followed, I did a lot to try to make magic for my kid around the holidays. I didn’t grow up with an Advent calendar tradition, but I made my own version, hand-sewn from coloured felt, with jokes and activities tucked into every day. I dragged us around to big holiday light shows and Christmas markets. We played in the snow and took nature walks. We watched classics like Rudolph and Frosty and Home Alone.
This year, things look different than they did in 2020. Now we live in my parents’ house together with my dad, and everyone is less alone. We’ve been through three more years of the pandemic. Our spirits (or mine, at least) are a bit more … I won’t say crushed, but dampened. My kid has grown so much, he’s hardly recognizable as the chubby-cheeked four-year-old he was in 2020. And yet, there are joys. He still runs into our bed for a snuggle every morning. He still asks me about his Baka. And he still likes the handmade Advent calendar. When he pulled “drive around and look at lights” on Dec 23rd this year, he was so excited. We all bundled into the car and drove through the mild, rainy city, snapping photos of our favourite houses, all the way to Kringlewood. On the way home, we stopped at Dairy Queen and had late-night ice cream. Why not?
Time hasn’t made things all that much easier for me. If anything, this year felt like the hardest one yet. I have cried so much, spent so much time running myself ragged, trying to recreate the magic I used to feel around the holidays, and questioning why I bother. Does anyone need or want or expect these efforts, except me? Doing it exhausts me, and not doing it makes me sadder. In spite of my own permanent fog of grief, I can’t really complain about the holidays this year. I’m grateful to be warm and safe and alive. It’s been wonderful to have some downtime with my little family, to read books, play video games with my kid, set up a little cinema for him under his bed, and stay up much too late because there’s nothing to wake up early for the next day.
And to rest. In the quiet valley between Christmas and New Year’s, which Colin refers to as “days of sloth and rosé,” I’m doing my best to just exist. Drifting around, haunting the corners of my house, the occasional crunch of a cracker topped with leftover cheese the only sound to suggest my presence. Here I am. Crunch. I love you.
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Thank you for sharing this heartfelt rememberance and story of Christmas grief