Dragging Up Boxes

In November when people first started yammering about the local radio station finally flipping over to Christmas music...I wasn't anxious to seek it out.  I thought the first note would open the flood gates and bring back memories of Christmas with Sue.

But there's something comforting about Christmas music to me.  I'm talking about the old stuff...the stuff I grew up with...the stuff that filled my house as a kid...the stuff I continued to play alone in my apartment during my twenties before I was lucky enough to have someone to listen with by the fire.  

When I played Johnny Mathis, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, or Nat King Cole...I wasn't shot back to Christmas with Susan...because the music represented a lifetime to me...my life.

So I played my favorites...edging myself closer to making the leap of bringing up the boxes. I was hoping that opening the Christmas boxes was going to be as simple as turning the radio dial and finding those comforting songs...but I knew better.  

I knew those boxes contained our life...our Christmases...our memories of the boys enjoying the wonder of the season.  And I was scared to look at our life...scared to stand there and stare at it all alone.

So I put it off.

I put it off longer than I probably should have...longer than I wanted to.  

I wanted to have myself a Merry Little Christmas...I wanted one for my boys.

They will only have so many Christmas Seasons in their lives where they are enveloped in the wonder and magic of believing.  And I wanted them to have as much of that as possible...they had already been robbed of enough childhood.

But each day...something stopped me from dragging up those boxes.  

I've learned that every first is painful...but it's also a nail in the coffin...so to speak.

As we have tackled each first as a family...we have moved further from when we were a family of four...instead of just three.  We have moved further from her being alive...and in our lives. Opening those boxes without her was going to be...in essence...closing the chapter on sharing Christmas with her.  

Not something I wanted to do...because I couldn't imagine Christmas without her.

But here it was...approaching more quickly each day.

What could I do?

So I dug down deep...got my game face on for the boys...and dragged up some boxes.