Why I don’t put up a Christmas Tree?

I stopped putting up a Christmas tree the year after my mother passed. Christmas was her favorite holiday, it was went she knew all her children were going to come home or call her. She was busy cooking in the kitchen all of our favorite dishes, making sure the house was decorated and the tree was lit.

I had taken my mother to the hospital for what we thought was going to be something simple, she would get medication and come home. I had ordered her gifts that were under the tree, I had thought she must have pneumonia because they are keeping her. She would be home in time for Christmas and what we learned was she wasn’t coming home this trip but she was dying. 

As a caregiver you’re so focused on the love one that you have their schedule memorized, have the doctor’s phone numbers programmed into the phone, and you’re on alert. I had no control over this situation and it felt like it was in warp speed. When the dust settled she was gone, a piece of me was laid in the ground with her, and I wasn’t going to put up another tree. 

I returned her gifts to the merchants, closed her bank accounts, and grieved for years.  The year that my mother has passed I laid next to her in a recliner and she looked at me and said it was the best Christmas she ever had. It was my worse because my best friend, my confidant, my Mother was leaving me.

It took me years before I could conjure up the nerve to have a tree put up. I ordered a live tree something I never had done, the company understood the importance of the tree and had the largest tree delivered. My eldest sister and her husband came to help me decorate the tree. When alone I stared at it and the tears flowed like a river. It was the closure that I needed. 

My Mother passed December 31, 2006 and there was the one time I put up a tree but after that I stopped.