Christmas is Coming

Dear Aaron,

Christmas is coming.

I love Christmas: lights, decorations, music. Warmth, family, love. Candlelight, warm blankets, friends.

And several years we "enjoyed" the hospitality of the Hotel on the Hill during December. But that's okay. You liked it there. You actually loved it; maybe because they loved you, too. It was very different than at home. Instead of Christmas carols, we were serenaded by ventilators and telemetry alarms, IV pumps and feeding pumps. We had the constant lights of the PICU, but there were warm blankets and friends, and love. 

Everywhere you were there was love.

I put up most of the Christmas decorations this week. All that is left are the ornaments for the tree and a surprise Dad and I are working on. Just like pretty much every year, I did find an ornament we missed when we took the tree down. Usually it's one of the little glass or crystal ones, but this time it was one Grampa made for me a few years ago with his lathe. He doesn't use it anymore. He's getting older, more frail, and I wonder how much longer before he and Gramma join you. Selfishly, I hope it's still a ways off.  

I know I'm decorating early. Thanksgiving isn't until a week from today. But this year I need it, and I need it now.

There are only five stockings on the wall, just five. The big kids who are married have their own, Michael is on his mission so we'll send gifts to him, and yours... I just couldn't hang it with the rest. Those stockings will get filled, and I want to do something with yours, but it won't be the same. So it hangs on a different wall.  I need it up. I need to not feel like you're being erased, but it's still different. And it's hard. 

I miss you, Aaron. I miss watching your eyes light up as you see the tree, seeing you enjoy the dancing penguins above your bed, needing to turn those off so you would actually go to sleep. I miss the gentle Christmas lights we wound around your play bars that would gently fade in and out through the night. 

Christmas will be different this year. For the first time in 33 years, we won't have any children (okay, or adult children) sleeping here on Christmas Eve. We had two Christmases back in the beginning of our marriage but that was a long, long time ago. 

And then ten years ago, you and I spent Christmas in the PICU. I thought we were going to do it again last year, but I guess there were other plans. I came home with Daddy, without you, and you went to spend Christmas with Jesus. I bet it was an amazing Christmas. Did you sing with the angels? Were you there? You love music so much, I feel certain you sang your heart out. 

Will you check in on us this year? 

Please?

It's been 11 months, 48 weeks, on Saturday. One more month and it will be a whole year since your heart stopped and mine, somehow, kept going. 

I really don't know what to expect Christmas to look like. 

I'm so grateful to be your mom. I love you.  I miss you.

Love,
Mama

“The most important thing is, even when we're apart ... I'll always be with you ...”

- A. A. Milne