Meet you at the Sunset Meeting - January Meeting

This months meeting is about the holiday season and how you coped. What was it like for you? Did you do anything special in your childs memory?

Christmas in our house is big… 2009 was meant to be Matilda’s first Christmas… there was meant to be oodles of gifts under the tree for her – instead there were none. Her Christmas frock that her dad bought her was packed away in her special little suitcase..

I found christmas eve to be harder than christmas – I was depressed.. our house was full of guests and while festive cheer and merriment seem to permeate the house all I could hear was the silence.. the silence of no baby crying.. Matilda should have been 2 weeks old.. I excused myself at about 10pm and went to bed to cry myself to sleep..

Christmas day.. again something was missing but I think grieving the night before helped me to stay sane the day after. That and the fact that Christmas was at our house and we were in the kitchen preparing the feast most of the day...

Truth be told, I also had the support of a few glasses of G&T on Christmas day to help me through!

We honoured Matilda in a few little ways.. One of my girl friends bought me an angel ornament with Matilda’s name on it that we put on the tree. She is Chinese and so was tell me about a Buddhist ritual where they light incense on special occasions and leave it near an open window to welcome spirits of loved ones into the house – and she gave me some incense and the instructions to repeat the ritual. So I did that on Christmas morning.. in addition to lighting Matilda’s candle while we were opening presents. I would have liked to do more.. but by the same token I feel like I would have crumbled into a ball of grief if we had. Perhaps this year Christmas can be more of a celebration rather than a memorial.

I am glad there are no other children in the family yet and that we didn’t have to put on a brave face and watch any children playing and having fun – I know that’s selfish but it felt right that there were no other children present.