HOLIDAYS | FAMILY | MENTAL HEALTH
His First Christmas Was Our Family’s Last — In the Face of Mental Illness
Birth, death, jail, and a new look for holidays.
Christmas air.
Baking. Levity and love. Crowded dining tables brimming with over-indulgence.
Wrapping gifts, keeping secrets.
Anticipation.
Sins are forgotten if not forgiven and put aside during the magical season.
Christmas used to be one of my favorite holidays.
And then, one year everything changed, never to return as pure again.
The Year of Firsts
Our first grandchild was three months old. Nervous excitement tingled through me for his first Christmas, for none of the reasons most new grandparents experience.
This was the first Christmas my younger daughter had a baby of her own.
This was the first year I had made an emotional decision that only I knew.
Nervous.
I stood at the kitchen sink and stared outside at the calm canal in our backyard. A few sand cranes tottered by on their spindly legs. Mullet fish jumped, bursting through the surface of the water, to show off their best belly flops near our dock.
Serenity outside, upheaval in me.
The sun-filled world carried on blissfully unaware of the turmoil in my mind.
The Year of Lasts
The year 2017, known for those firsts, would also be the year of lasts. It was the last year we celebrated together.
Everything changed rapidly post-holiday, leaving behind those who lived in denial.
I knew my marriage was over unless a significant overhaul hovered close by. A miracle.
Hope against hope, really.
Exhaustion had taken root in my body, my heart, and my soul.
How does one say goodbye to 25 years of lopsided wedded bliss?
I stuffed my angst down deep. It was Christmas, after all. A favorite.
Our grandson sat in his baby seat on the counter as I cleaned the dishes. My oldest nodded off in a recliner, and my youngest sat on the couch, his hand mindlessly busy with the TV remote control.
My husband sat at the kitchen island and focused on his iPad.
Silence.
Booming silence.
Doesn’t anyone around me feel it, too?
The phone rang and interrupted the lull of awkward silence.
My younger daughter had sprung from jail. Can I pick her up? She doesn’t have shoes or a ride.
She wants to celebrate Christmas with us and her baby.
“Please, Mom?”
Left untreated, a brain riddled with mental illness easily rationalizes the bizarre.
We kept her on speaker phone, let her have a taste of family unity, and I explained that she was three hours away and it simply was not feasible.
Spelling out that the six-hour round-trip, resulting in an arrival during the middle of the night wasn’t happening, was the normal course of business to allow her brain to catch up.
Draining. Pressure. Guilt.
My grandson’s first Christmas did not include his mother or father.
The Years of Restructure
Hands down, 2018 was emotionally rough from beginning to end. The death of a marriage, of a dream, and the demise of all I knew to be true.
Aside from being alone as I was granted guardianship of my grandson in May, his first birthday came on the heels of my September divorce.
His mother, yes, my daughter, was back in jail for that momentous occasion, also.
Petty charges yield life-altering consequences.
Me and him, him and me, stood alone in the middle of the parted family seas.
Christmas 2018 brought floundering. Mine.
I had choices. It was more than obvious that I could either go insane enveloped in the hatred of others, and my loneliness, or forge ahead on a self-created path.
Easy?
No.
The alternative, to sink into the dark recesses of self-loathing, would never be easy for me, either.
Ian changed my world and my thinking. Raising him, and being trusted to do so, was the greatest gift I never anticipated.
There would be no giving up on any holiday.
Though Christmas love, the joy it once represented for me, will never return looking the same, it’s there underneath.
I know that it’s up to me to dig for it.
This year, 2022, the humungous advent calendar covers Ian’s bedroom closet door.
When he awakens, he can see how soon Santa will arrive. Ian has his eye on the last to-be-applied star. Eddie, the Elf on a Shelf, will start watching him in a few days.
The elf started as a part-time helper, and I enjoy his temporary status. Don’t judge, I know most start on the first day of December.
Not us, though, and that’s okay.
Is Christmas different?
Indeed.
But moving forward, I held onto what the holiday signifies to me aside from the spiritual foundation.
This year I’ve had to sing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at least 547 times, 20 of them this morning on the drive to Ian’s school.
A new first for the books.
I’m feelin’ it. There is a lightness and freedom dancing in my heart.
Christmas air.
Baking. Levity and love. Crowded dining tables brimming with over-indulgence.
Wrapping gifts, keeping secrets.
Anticipation.
Make your Christmas or your holiday, your way. Enjoy it and life to the fullest.
You’re not alone.
May all of you bathe in love and warmth this holiday season.
May you find inner peace and understanding.
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