What About Christmas?

Christmas is a time for families. When it is just you and your partner, with no children charging about the place, Christmas takes on a new meaning; emptiness. That emptiness is made worse by the fact that the rest of the world is steadily going crazy and you can’t join in. I’m writing about it now because I won’t be able to manage it in 3 weeks’ time.

This year, as last, we will be volunteering all of Christmas Day at Bath Open Christmas, serving lunch to the old, vulnerable and homeless. If last year is anything to go by, the morning will be vaguely manageable, a visit to Evie, lay some flowers on her grave, then to Bath to start the day’s work. The hard part comes when we get home to an empty house. I’m thinking about a chilli this year rather than turkey. And a decent bottle or wine or three. For those bereaved parents with surviving children, I can’t begin to imagine the conflict that must be going on in their minds. Coping with the hole in their lives left by their dead child, yet trying to remain upbeat for surviving children. For those of us who are now childless, then we will almost certainly want the day to be over as fast as possible. It has become a day to survive rather than to enjoy.

The other day I put a post on FB asking people to remember Evie if they send us a Christmas Card. Last year over half didn’t and that cut very deep. It sent us the message that she had already been forgotten, exactly the opposite of what we want. It’s all part and parcel of the whole deal whereby the vast majority of the world doesn’t get that we won’t ever move on. Someone asked me the other day why I keep repeating that message. Why? Because no matter how many times I say it, people still don’t take it on board. I would dearly love to free my mind of the urge to remind people that she was the very centre of my universe because they remember. I’m even starting to sound like a broken record to myself.

We’ll buy Evie a present this year and decorate her grave for Christmas. I’ve painted a stone for her asking Santa to stop there. Evie made Christmas special for us. The excitement, the fun and the fact that she could out-eat both of us from a very young age.

So - be prepared for an image of Evie on FB on Christmas Day. As for us, it’ll be body armour on, mask up and on with the day in Bath.