Holiday Fear

My first wave of Thanksgiving grief came today.

I just got back from my weekly WeightWatchers meeting, here at work, and at the end of the meeting, our rep began the speech that I expect to hear more and more over the next week. She expressed her joy about the wonders of Thanksgiving and the happiness brought by the entire family being together, celebrating and eating holiday foods. I left the meeting with a growing panic in my gut. I felt like crying. I almost did.

In 2003, shortly after Chris was diagnosed with cancer, I remember hearing a woman in the bathroom at Filene’s (where I worked at the time) prattle on about how her sister bought the wrong sized turkey for the holiday and how angry she was. I remember feeling nothing. This woman’s complaints simply didn’t compute. My perspective had changed. I knew I usedto have feelings about stuff like that, but next to my husband’s rare cancer diagnosis, it meant n o t h i n g. 

I am scared of next week. Chris’ birthday is November 23, the day before the holiday. I will not be choosing a gift for my husband this year. I will not be dining with him and toasting to another year together, smiling at him from across the table, holding his hands, kissing them. Not this year. Not ever again. I wonder if he knew how much those toasts, comprised of total and complete honesty and conviction, meant to me. I don’t think I ever told him. It’s not like me to not have told him. Did I tell him? I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore.

Grief has been grief. It hurts. It’s dark and lonely. I yearn for him every single moment my brain isn’t otherwise occupied. My heart hurts. I feel cheated, shortchanged and a little stupid, as though the joke was on me. I expect he felt that way about having cancer, too. There’s sense in both of our situations of being left high and dry, like walking a tightrope without a net and having someone cut the rope.

Chris’ birthday is the scariest day of all to me. There’s a void in my heart that scares me half to death.

Thanksgiving and Christmas will be doable. Chris and I never really bought into the commercialism of the holidays. What I miss the most about me and Chris is how we agreed not to buy gifts for each other in favor of waking up, embracing, kissing and simply and honestly saying, “Happy Thanksgiving” and/or “Merry Christmas”. That special, quiet moment was the gift.