Changing the Face of the Season

I managed, by the grace of God to get through one of the most difficult months of the year for me, November.  Yesterday marked the eighth year since I said goodbye to my youngest son.  I recall that day being the darkest I have ever experienced.  I don’t recall what my emotions were during his four hour long home going service, but I do recall the final moment as they lowered my baby into the ground and I stood there paralyzed with grief. My first inclination was to jump in behind the dark cooper colored box that held one of the most precious people in my life.

Thank God for December!  Now can we get past this commercialized mess we have come to call the holiday season already?  We go into debt for one day, to buy toys for kids that they will either break, or lose by December 30^th!  Afterward we don’t speak to the people that we grin at and tell lies to until next year.  Yes, I said it!  I am a bit ticked, as people seem to neglect what this season is about. 

I think about all of the parents who are grieving because they no longer have their babies, and Christmas is not this grand thing that the television commercials portray.  I think of a friend of mine who lost her son last year, just before Christmas.  I texted her on Thanksgiving Day to ask how she was doing.  She’d spent the day in bed.  It seems that some people, even some who understand the pain of losing a child don’t get her depression.  I get it.  This woman buried her baby two days after Christmas!  Her situation got the cogs in my little brain working.

I have to change the face of the next holiday season!   I am going to make sure that I can remember my baby by defining what he was about.  He was a sweet and easy child to rear.  That indicates compassion.  He was intelligent beyond his years, which indicates business savvy, and he was wiser than older people I know.  I have to change not only the face of the holidays for myself, but for others who have suffered horrible loses during the holiday season.

According to USA Today and Psychology Today, it is a myth the suicides increase during the holiday season.  Okay, who is arguing?  What I know firsthand is that holidays, birthdays and anniversaries are particularly difficult when one has lost a child to homicide or suicide.  This is not to suggest that it is not hard losing loved ones to illness, but a child being murdered represents a different type of loss.  Believe me, I almost lost two  sons in one day!!

I will continue my research of people who have lost their children and the affects over a period of years.  I consistently experience certain silent critiques because I am brave enough to explore and reveal my pain though it has been years since El’s transition.  Why are we so phony in this society?  Another question for another day.  I digress, I must change how people are able to handle the holidays by showing them the compassion, intelligence and wisdom that my baby boy had. 

There is a lot of work to be done, and a lot of love to share with those who feel as hopeless as I have felt for years after my son’s demise.  At times grief lingers because I have a remaining son that suffers.  There remains a far-reaching residual effect that murder has had on families.  For this reason, I must make sure that my son’s dreams are fulfilled in a positive way.

To hell with what naysayers think about me…Everything I do from this point is about helping someone who cannot get up by themselves to heal. That is what El would want.   Son, I am on it!