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When My Son Died, We Went Ice Skating
From tragedy, our family’s favorite holiday tradition was born.
The days after Thanksgiving were quietly agonizing. No one really mentioned what was on their minds, at least not to me, but it was felt heavily throughout the family.
Our usual family tradition had been to take a ride up to the local Home Depot the day after Thanksgiving. We’d pick out a tree, my youngest son would stick his bare ass in one of the holes of the photo stand-in scene for the family picture, and then we’d decorate the following day. But this year, everyone was at a standstill, and mainly waiting on me to decide our next move.
Although I was the biggest wreck, it was still my call and mood that determined the fate of this holiday season. This was the first Christmas since the accident — and we were all dreading it.
I didn’t want it to be that way. I would have preferred someone else in the family take over the decision making and just let me wallow in my pain, but nobody else had it in them either. It was up to me; the person who had been in charge of all the traditions and orchestrator of the holiday spirit for as long as my kids had been alive. They didn’t know how to handle it without me.
