Anyone who knows me well knows how much I love Christmas. More specifically, decorations and lights. The first thing I always ask my friends when they move into a new home is “where are you going to put the Christmas tree?” Ever since I was a child, I have been this way. I don’t care about gifts, just twinkling lights and garland.
We never have a real tree. Most of the people in my house have allergies so we have always went with the artificial trees. Yes, trees. For the last several years we have had 5 trees in our house. My husband isn’t too crazy about that but since I’m crazy he chooses his battles.
We got married a few days after Christmas so we lived together almost a full year before our first Christmas as a married couple. I of course wanted to put up the tree before Thanksgiving and he said no. This was our discussion for years so when he would say no I would go to moms and try to convince them their tree needed to be up. My step dad would usually give in and I at least got to work on that tree. He loved Christmas about as much as I did.
Most of you know we lost him last December. Christmas wasn’t easy on any of us and I took down the decorations earlier than normal after. The other night I convinced my husband I needed to put up the small tree in the den (don’t judge). I’m still crazy so he didn’t put up much argument. I got out the tree and the ornaments for it and as I started taking it out of the box, a wave of sadness hit me like a ton of bricks. That was days ago and I still haven’t finished decorating it and the lights have only been turned on once since it was assembled. I have contemplated not putting up any more trees this year because it’s too hard.
I don’t expect everyone to understand why this is so hard for me, and I am in no way blaming my step dad. I miss him. It’s hard to be happy when a piece of your life is missing. I’ve known since last year that this would be hard. I’ve told myself I would try. Normally, I’m worse than the kids about the Christmas tree and this year my heart hurts just thinking about it.
Tell me again when this gets easier…
The days of my life 