Joyful Again!

My husband Curt died in 1996, which is now more than a dozen years ago. I still cry when my boys and I take out their father's stocking, ornaments...but the tears are more joyful as the years pass. Rather than pushing it away, I want to really feel that pain now. The ache helps to make fresh again the love at its source; it brings back all the wonderful memories that were God's gift to my family through my husband.

This Christmas season, my friend Anne Rinaldi-Nonamaker wrote a beautiful note on her Facebook page that she has given me permission to share here and on my RSS. She speaks so beautiful to these feelings as she moved into her 6th Christmas without her son David in her life. She gives beautiful witness to those who are struggling with grief this season, that there will come a day when they will be joyful again.


6 Christmases later I participated again

Saturday, December 26, 2009 at 7:32am

This is the 6th Christmas without David & for the first time I participated again.

I listened to Christmas music & I could hear him singing those songs and I was thankful that I could still remember and that the memories of fun and love and joy overshadowed the pain and empiness of not having him here.

I put up a tree and decorated it with many of his homemade & store bought onaments. It was so wonderful to have those flashes of memory back to the first time I ever saw those treasures and how he would ask every year if I was going to hang them again ...and I would say yes. No matter how the tree looked in the end ... David would always stand back and give me all the credit on how beautiful it was this year. He would find just one little thing i did differently and really imbelish on the genius I had in doing this or that ... makes me smile just remembering again now.

I participated in gift exchanges and I could feel his excitement at gift exchange (and purchase time). David was such a thoughtful gift giver and such an appreciative reciever. He made everyone feel like their gift was the most important and perfect.

Yes, I felt pangs envy for families as I watched them creating thier treasured memories, but more often I found myself celebrating quietly for them. I kept reembering how blessed I am to have 23 years of magical moments to call up in my mind and heart.

David loved it when I was happy. He was at his best when the masses were having fun, celebrating, singing, and just "hanging out" together ... remembering is good.....when the time is right ....for me it was 6 years ....

A Small Journey with Mary - the Pieta

I don't tell this story often, and then usually only to fellow Catholics, but it is Christmas Eve and a rather sad one in some ways for my second son, so I feel the need to share with him just how very special he is.

When I was a tiny girl living in Chicago IL USA, I heard about the Worlds Fair scheduled to be in New York in 1964-1965. They were actually going to let the beautiful Pieta of Michelangelo leave Italy to come! I prayed that I might have the chance to see it... and forgot about it.

...Until the day that I stood in front of the statue in 1965. Somehow, my father had been transferred by his company to New York. Just for that one year. And there I was. And there it was.

I cried, because I remembered my prayer. I remembered speaking with heaven and giving thanks, and promising that I would look very carefully and remember ever single line since I knew how special this was, and knew that I might never have that chance again. But still I did pray, that if it ever might be possible, that I might have the privilege some day to see that beautiful work again. And, having made the prayer, I forgot all about it.

Twenty-seven years later, these memories flooded back as I stood before the Pieta once again in Rome. I was there with my husband, a good man but not a Catholic, and the father of my son. We had wanted to take a trip together and everything was set to go to Jamaica, but we booked instead a package for the same cost for London and Rome. The trip was because our marriage was in a rough spot. The whole week before that moment, while we were not fighting we might as well have been apart since we acted like strangers.

And suddenly, there I was. And there it was. And I was so grateful that I had taken such care to remember every line, because now it was behind the Plexiglas to keep a second vandal from damaging it like the first one had. The tears really came this time, the pride in my own heart was softened. With the memories and the prayerful conversation, I begged that we might be granted a second child...and we were, that very evening.

But the story does not end there either. When the child was only six months old, my husband was diagnosed with a fatal cancer. Out of nowhere, a small Pieta came to my home that I still treasure. Our Mother's love not only sustained us during that time, she also deigned to teach me so that I could help his mother, a girl who had lost her own father young and now was losing her only son. At the same time, both Our Mother and our sister Faustina sent saints both from heaven and earth who helped my husband to accept Our Lord before he died.

Thank you again, sweet Virgin! Love you more than anything, little Spud!