All I want for Christmas....

Well, that is pretty obvious, and it is equally obvious that I won't get it. 

This season has me thinking of all the years we spent together, all the Christmases together.  I remember the very first one, we had been dating less than a month and I got a phone call from a mutual friend who told me that Brian had bought me a Christmas present.  So, there I was on Christmas Eve, out shopping to buy this guy that I hardly knew something for Christmas.  I bought him a shirt....the funny thing was, he bought me a shirt too!  One that I had pointed out at the mall when we were shopping one time and mentioned that I liked it.  That was Brian, always remembering things I noticed.  He would buy me things that I would casually mention that I would like to have.  He always tucked it away and at Christmas time, there were things I didn't even realize I wanted and/or needed under the tree. 

One year I broke my tree topper, the one from my childhood and I was devastated.  That same year, Brian bought me an angel for the top of our tree.  It was a Madame Alexander doll, which I collected.  He wrote me a card and told me that he wouldn't have made it through that year (he was a student at Palmer College of Chiropractic at the time) without me.  He said to "look up" that my Christmas present was so special I couldn't miss it.  There she was on the top of my parents tree.  I keep that precious card in the box with her and read it every year.

As years went by, and finances got tighter he became a little bit more of a Grinch at Christmas, not totally green, mind you, but more careful.  One year I bought him a Grinch stuffed doll, I laughed hysterically when he opened it, he didn't think it was so funny.......Last year I remember being in the car with the kids and the Grinch song came on, I said "Listen kids!  It's dad's theme song!" and giggled.  Again, he wasn't laughing, but he did smile a little......  I know that in the years after his cancer diagnosis that he was even more careful at Christmas time, always telling me to not buy the kids as many things (yes, I do tend to go overboard!) but I couldn't help it!  I mean, c'mon, our four kids were dealing with something that no child should ever have to deal with, so I over compensated.  This year I again went all out, but I have to admit, as I was checking out with my loot at Walmart the other night I had tears in my eyes and could barely talk.  I could just hear Brian "They don't need all that stuff, how MUCH are you spending?!?"  I seriously wish he were here to chastise me for it, but he isn't, so I am again over compensating! 

While Christmas was not Brian's favorite holiday, mostly because of the amount of money spent, every year since his diagnosis he made it his goal to be here for the next one.  This summer, a few weeks before he died, he had a brain bleed and was talking incoherently.  Though there was not a lot that we could understand, the one word we COULD understand was Christmas, Christmas, Christmas.  He knew he wanted to be here for it.  I am so sad that he is not.

I know this year as I put my beautiful angel on her perch there will be tears in my eyes.  I know that as I wind the ribbons that flow from beneath her around the tree that I will think of Christmases past with both joy and sadness.  Those ribbons will wind around all of the memories that are hung on the tree.  Our First Christmas Together ornament, Santa Fred, picture ornaments of our babies, pictures of our family cutting down our Christmas trees and the one I made tonight, an ornament with the year 2011 on the bottom of it and on top of it an angel dressed in blue, praying, with a picture of Brian in it.  This Christmas those ribbons are as symbolic as they are decorative.  They will not only wind through my past with Brian, but this year there will be new ornaments added to the tree, and the ribbons will wind around those new memories as well.  I hope as those ribbons wind their way down the tree that we are able to smile, even laugh at the memories they pass.  I hope that as we wind our way through our first Christmas without Brian that the day is not remembered as a completely sad day, but one that we filled with laughter and love for one another.  That is what Brian would want.