I am prone to complicated metaphors. To follow this one, you will have had to have broken a glass on your kitchen floor before. If you haven’t, there are some important things to understand. Shattered glass is tricky. It breaks in large chunks and tiny pieces. Those with experience cleaning broken glass can often manage it without injury. Large chunks go first. Tiny pieces are carefully sought out and picked up with care. And you wipe and sweep and vacuum and mop and wipe and sweep and vacuum and mop again hoping that you’ve gotten everything up. Somehow you know one little shard was missed and you announce to the household that a glass was broken in the kitchen so that everyone takes care. Hard soles are worn for days in the kitchen to protect feet from cuts. And just as soon as everyone forgets about the broken glass, someone not wearing shoes steps on the last missed shard and bleeds. It is never in the place where the glass was broken but usually somewhere odd – it either ricocheted across the room during the break or was moved by all the wiping and sweeping and vacuuming and mopping.
A child at my church was killed one Christmas Eve. She was younger than I by a few years. Her parents had recently divorced, and she was spending that holiday evening with her father. She’d asked to sleep in his room, but he sent her to her own room to be a big girl. Later that night a truck slammed into the house near her room and killed her instantly. It was so horrific that our household was not filled with the usual cloudiness of grief and compassion for others but a foreign inability to comprehend the news. What must that family feel? What does that kind of trauma do to a family that is already smarting from the recent divorce? How do they go on? And do they celebrate Christmases going forward at all?
Then I lost my mother a few years later on December 26th. That following year I remembered thinking about the questions we had about that family who’d experienced a traumatic loss right at the Christmas holiday – if they’d ever celebrate Christmases again. We were quickly approaching my nephew’s first Christmas and of course we’d celebrate Christmases again – life moved forward regardless of who came along with us.
One can never be adequately prepared for loss, but the accompanying shock and bowlful of mixed reactions is expected and well attended by loved ones in your community – particularly the elders of the community who come and see about your immediate needs. But what I’ve never witnessed is anyone taking care of people in the aftermath of loss. Once you’re sort of standing on your own, no longer hunched over in sobs and listless with grief you are often left to figure out the rest of your life on your own.
Exactly one year after my mother died, I woke up in my sister’s house to silence. It wasn’t particularly unusual to wake up to silence, but this silence felt eerie. As I sat up in bed trying to understand what I was feeling, it dawned on me – I expected that everyone would be dead. I don’t mean everyone in the house. I mean everyone in the world. I was old enough to know that was an irrational thought, but it paralyzed me in the bed. After a while, I heard life sounds and I knew everyone in the house was accounted for and was able to continue about my day as usual. I would not feel that kind of fear again until the following December 26th. And I would continue to feel that fear every December 26th.
After seeking professional therapy for the trauma associated with the loss of my mother, December 26th wasn’t as bad. I didn’t expect that everyone in the world was dead, but I did still spend some part of the early morning reminding myself that my thoughts were irrational and even if someone did not wake up that day, I would be able to survive it. It usually happened when there was only one person who slept later than everyone else so I would just wake them up if I couldn’t console myself.
This year I woke up late on December 26th. My tummy woke me up, finally ready for a meal that was not chicken wings and I got up to make breakfast. Just before I went downstairs to the kitchen, I realized that I didn’t have that annual December 26th fear. There wasn’t any feeling at all – it was a normal day as it should have been – and I went downstairs to eat. A few minutes later, everyone else in the house emerged from bedrooms and I was so grateful that I hadn’t even been listening for life sounds that morning. It was a perfectly normal day. It even dared to be sunny and warm.
But I still hate December 26th and I spent the day with a general I-don’t-feel-good funk. Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was because I’d eaten my weight in chicken wings the day before.
I am Regina Lynette. I hate December 26th.
I am Regina Lynette 