Today is the end of Christmastime in our house. It is Sunday, our last guests have left. It is time to take the tree down. It’s always a sad thing to do, if only for the obvious reasons, as it is the end of the season that I love, one filled with gaiety, beauty, joy, rest, peace, giving, and feelings of goodwill. The season lasts more than two months in our house. We all love it, creating the warm atmosphere at home, listening to the music, all types of Christmas songs, from ancient carols to silly pop songs. This year the kids learned a few new old songs that they found hilarious, ones that are so old it’s sure that my parents learned them too and laughed, as kids. There were a few new solemn carols too, mostly learned by Celestine, the oldest. There were a few times I caught Constantin humming the tune of a classic carol, so I’d put it on. Aristide’s favourite was the same as my Dad’s, and one day he turned it up louder when it came on and I was again stuck by the similarities of him and my father.

What a joy it is to share these moments, to mark their growth with the little traditions as much as the big ones, to imagine the memories that they will have and perhaps share with their own kids one day. This is what I love the most about this time of year with them. In giving them these memories I feel myself healing as well, as through these moments I connect with my father and grandmother too, by doing the things they loved to do. So long I have felt disconnected from them, my father especially, as his death was so traumatic that I never fully faced it, never connected with that pain, that grief. Because I never really grieved him, I couldn’t really allow myself to miss him, I just pushed everything having to do with him aside. Now that I’ve started to process all of this, in the past year or so, I have also started to connect with his spirit again. How very strange it is, to connect with the dead, our loved ones, in our own minds and memories.

This year, the packing up of the decorations, the transition to le temps ordinaire, feels especially poignant to me as I wonder about so much as I put them away whilst listening to my favourite carols for the last time, I wonder from what perspective I will see them when I unpack them again next year. What will have changed? Do I have the strength to face what the year to come holds? Yes, I do, but I don’t want to have to face it all. I fear that so much will change, that this will have been my mother’s last Christmas here on earth, that she will surely leave during this year, if not this month. How is it that she was alone on this last Christmas? How awful it is to write these words. At the same time, how fortunate it is to have the cognisance of this, finally, after postponing the planning just a little bit longer with each passing marker of time, each test, each recovery from something that was potentially life-threatening. Now that Christmas is done, it is bleak January, and the truth that I’ve been avoiding is all the more dark and inevitable, it seems.

Two days ago I woke up to a text from mom saying that she’s back on no food, doctor’s orders. No ice chips even, due to bloating. This is a scary thing to read, as not eating means the body is not working. The biggest, most significant, true thing that I learned from being with my father as he was dying is that when the body stops working, there is a point at which you cannot come back. There is a point of no return. No matter what the illness that triggers it, when the body starts down the path of dying, it rarely returns. That is not to say that I have given up hope, no, not at all. My mother is a medical miracle, she has taken on every obstacle in her path since she was diagnosed with not one, but two cancers beginning in March of 2021. She has tackled this with such simple conviction; I have been quite impressed. She has in fact been fighting for her life, so it makes sense that she should meet the challenge. But she has done so without panic, or self-pity, but resolutely, sternly, matter-of-fact-ly. I wonder if this is her WASP-y ness showing. Today I wonder if her ability to downplay, to not react, is simply a coping mechanism to deal with the frightening realisation of her own mortality. I imagine there will be points at which she breaks down, shows fear, reducing herself to a being with emotions beyond anger, frustration, or hunger, if that can be considered, at least in her case, an emotion. For so much of what has ailed her in the past year has had to do with eating, not eating, hunger, or lack thereof. All I want to do is to chew something, she said. Here I am, worrying about the opposite, how I might ever stop eating, as my tummy gets rounder, heavier, as I eat to avoid the inevitable truths that keep getting closer, more clear, and harder to deny. The sensory seeking of smoothness, crunchy, flaky, but almost always sweet for me, the pleasure of sweetness is all I have to comfort me on dark days, as even when the sun comes through the misty Champagne mountain fog, it is still so dark lately, with these events.

So now I must prepare for my next trip so that when she does break down, I can be there for her – hold her, touch her, give her strength. I want to mother her in a way that way that she was never able to mother me. Maybe she was able to do so once upon a time. I cannot remember in my mind but my feelings say that she was once able to, but somehow, when things got harder, when I changed from a completely dependant child to one detached from her, she couldn’t figure out how to adapt. It was beyond her capacity at the time, so she retreated. I want to show her that I can still be there, in the difficulties, so that she might know that she can too. It is safe to be present. She can let go of the fear of not knowing what to do and of the sorrow, perhaps bitterness, of not knowing the warmth of love and closeness for so long. It may be unfamiliar at first, but it can come back, like a sense memory. It must come back. She so deserves to heal and feel safe as she prepares to leave us.

It is now Monday, and I was to start preparing this morning to leave for my trip. Last night before I slept I made a good list and with all of my commitment in mind so that I could get up, get the kids off to school, and with coffee in hand, resolutely breeze through the list, checking it off task by task. Yet alas, I simply couldn’t wake up. After 2 cups of coffee and having taken my car to the garage, the one thing on my list that involved another person knowing if I did not do it, I went back to sleep. Till 2pm. For now, I feel I must rest to process all of this in my body. It is so very heavy and now, at almost 3pm, I feel I might be able to get through some of it. I know I am also avoiding doing everything because I want to stop time, this time because I know what lies on the other side of it and it is not welcome or pleasant. It is the end of something, of someone, I have had by me my whole life. She has always been a part of me, always connected, even at times when we did not speak, she was there. If only as an idea, a concept that I was rejecting, she was still there, my opposing force. I have always, to some degree, been who I am in relationship to her, to who she is, to what she represents. Her strengths and her shortcomings have equally defined me. So what is to become of me when she is no longer my pole?

At some point yesterday it was all too much. I shoved the four boxes of Christmas in the hall, so that the main room at least looked finished. The memories and the wondering were just too much to bear, and the boys were arguing about something trivial, so the noise was cacophonous. The tree was gone, as were most of the little things that dotted the room with red and sparkle. But I left a few things, as it is still winter, and dark, and we need a little glittering light in our lives. So I left out the red cinnamon and apple candles, the miniature things on the mantle, the now dried cuttings that make a beautiful, grand spray of greenery and red berries in a large crystal vase, and the small white porcelain tree that sits in the corner with plants on the hand-painted table.

I told a tale, a true one, that in times past, the Christmas season didn’t actually end until Candlemas, when the baby Jesus was presented at the temple, the 2nd of February. Do you know your birthday is a holiday, I said to my daughter. I didn’t either, I said, until a year ago when I looked up this Chandeleur, the day when the French celebrate with crepes, to see what it was all about. How delightful to think that this day, forty days after the 25th December, was still considered Christmastime. So I think that I will use this date, too, to guide me a bit through this difficult time. The next happy day is at least the 2nd of February, guaranteed. No matter what else might pass between now and then, we will still have a few decorations up to remind us that we are still in a special time, when miracles can, do, and will happen for all of us, if we just look close enough to see them.

Tonight, when their father came home from work, he asked if the four boxes that were left in the hall were ready to close up and go down to the basement until next year. Yes, I said. It is time. So down they went, and now I must pack, to go on this trip, begrudgingly, but for certain.