Our Year of First

I received this unexpected e-mail from Dru this week. Julie, Dru and Gene’s daughter, was my fellow social worker at SOMC. Many of you may remember the seven part series Julie wrote about her battle with cancer. You may also remember the five part series that Dru and Gene shared last October-November about surviving the death of a child. I’ll let Dru take it from here:

“Hi Loren, I have been thinking about this for some time. We have a friend who recently lost their son and I think about the family often during this holiday season. I wrote this…I hope that it will be of use to anyone who has lost a child either this year or in the recent past…

I don’t know how to really start this, so I guess I will just jump in with both feet. It is a time of the year when most of us pause to remember Christmas past. I do the same, but something I also do is to think about those parents who have lost a child and will be spending the first Holiday Season without them. Really, I think about them living through what I call their year of first; all those special anniversaries we all celebrate as a family. Our year of first hit fast. Our daughter Julie died in February (2006). April was her birthday followed by Mother’s Day in May and Father’s Day in June. And then days just morphed one into the other, until the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays. Each special day held its own type of pain.

We did manage to put up a Christmas tree and decorate for the holiday season. I think it was made easier because Julie loved the holidays. She wasn’t a fan of the shopping but she did love to decorate the house and wrap the gifts. So I felt like I was decorating for her. Like anyone who has lost a loved one in Hospice care we attended the Hospice ceremony that presented family members with an ornament in memory of their loved one. I didn’t want to attend. I just wanted to stay home and lick my wounds; but we all got dressed and attended the ceremony. When Julie’s name was called I asked her sister to go forward to receive the ornament; because my legs just wouldn’t carry me up to the front. Chris brought the ornament back to our seat and opened the box. It was an ornament that I would normally have loved; just my style. A little hand carved wooden angel with blond hair wearing a blue gown. I hated that angel. All it did was remind me of Julie’s death. I didn’t need another reminder of what we had lost. I lived with her loss daily.

The day we were decorating the tree my husband handed me the Hospice ornament. I didn’t want to put it on the tree; but I didn’t want to upset my husband by refusing to hang it. However, I did take that darn thing and tried to wrestle it as far back in the tree as I could; anywhere, so that it would be out of my site. I must have worked five minutes burying the ornament in the depths of the tree. I thought I had accomplished my task until I stretched out on the sofa later that night. I was feeling rather blue and glanced up at the tree. There it was. That angel was perfectly lit by one of the lights on the tree looking down on me plain as it could be! I stared at it for a minute, first wondering how in the world I could still see it when I had worked so hard to conceal it. After a minute or so I really looked at the angel. I looked at the shoulder length blond hair and the facial features and realized how much it reminded me of Julie. Her blond hair and that ever present smile of hers. That ornament that I hated and tried to bury out of site suddenly gave me a sense of warmth and comfort. I have placed the ornament on the tree ever since. Try as I may, I have never been able to hang it the way I did the first year of her death. I can never get the tree lights to shine on it the same as it did that first night.

All I want to say to those parents who have lost a child this year is this. Celebrate your year of first the way that is comforting to you. As someone who has lost a child, I can tell you that the pain of the first year will get better. The wounds of our loss will never completely heal but they will get better. My Christmas wish for you is that you will be able to do as I do now when I look at our Christmas Angel. When I look at the Hospice Angel now instead of thinking of all that I lost—I am reminded of all that I was given.”