Talk about the holidays you dread, or have dreaded.

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Talk about the holidays you dread, or have dreaded.--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), November 19, 2000

Answers

Oh man. Holidays. I send you huge hugs. I know how awful it is. Our family Thanksgiving tradition is to go to a condo my mother-in-law owns at Lake Tahoe. We've been doing it for 25-30 years now. Nobody LIVES there, we just all congregate there, everybody brings a dish for dinner, we have lots and lots of laughs, spend the weekend, play games, etc. etc. 1996 was awful. David had died in May and we went to Tahoe in November. I still hurt in the pit of my stomach remembering being there without him. All our kids just love the Tahoe weekend and it was wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong that he wasn't there.

Christmas was worse. I didn't want to put up a tree. The only reason we got one up was that the kids' band all showed up, en masse, to help us get through it. We created our own new weird tradition that helped. Instead of going to midnight Mass (since I'd had disagreements with the catholic church earlier in the year--not at all related to DAvid's death--I was not going to go to midnight Mass either), we all congregated at the cemetery

Last year, it was Paul who was also gone. I couldn't even face Tahoe, so we didn't go at all. Instead we went to our daughter-in-law's parents home and it was ok. It was NOTHING like our traditional Thanksgiving and I even made it through the night without crying. I did Christmas in a daze. I did it because I had to, because everybody expected me to.

I don't know if holidays will ever be the same around here. Also, David's birthday was February 4 and Paul's was January 28, so when we enter November, I feel myself start to cringe, and I don't relax until the middle of February, at which point we are looking at "the anniversaries" (April 20 and May 18). June to November are clear sailing, though.

You will be much in my thoughts this coming week. I wish there were magic pills, but, of course, there are not.

Hugs...

-- Bev Sykes (basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us), November 21, 2000.


I got distracted and never finished describing our new weird Christmas ritual. We (the family and the kids' friends--about 15 last year) meet at the cemetery at midnight (it's amazing how dark it is there!) stand around the grave (the kids share a plot), drink Jim Beam (the only time all year I have anything alcoholic to drink), and pour some over the grave marker. Then we sing totally irreverant Christmas carols and I put a little Christmas tree in the older for flowers. We all go home feeling somewhat silly, sad, but also smiling a little because the whole thing is just so bizarre...and somehow, so "us."

-- Bev Sykes (basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us), November 21, 2000.

My Mother unexpectedly passed away at about this time in November 1943 - I was a wet eared, wide eyed father to be with a pregnant wife. For many years Christmas was extremely hard for me to stomach -- especially when putting up a good front for the kids and then mourning at night in bed. As the years passed the grief pretty well subsided, but I still feel orphanated and I miss my Mom.

-- Denver doug (ionoi@webtv.net), November 22, 2000.

Once my parents divorced I dreaded all holidays. The way they would try to guilt you into choosing them for the holiday or even worse try to tear down your "other" family so you felt to guilty to leave them. This is something that I will never do to my beloved children. I hope that any of you out there that are divorced never inflict this pain on your children.

Now my holidays are days of joy and sharing with those I love most.

-- Terri (Davelaw @san.rr.com), November 24, 2000.


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