A Light for My Path

When we bought our river house ten years ago, it was our weekend getaway place. It was so relaxing to be able to escape suburbia and our jobs for a few days, sit on the porch swing or the dock, listen to the owls call to each other in the evening, and watch the river go by. We decided that first year that we would always celebrate Christmas at the river.

We still decorated our house in Tampa. We put lights across the front porch and in the hedges along our front walk. We got a cut tree every year from the Catholic Church lot. We hung it with ornaments that we collected over the decades – ones the girls had made in Sunday School, the annual special issue White House or US Capitol ornament our older daughter and her husband gave us each year – lots of baubles that friends and family members had given us. Each held a memory and meaning.

We also went to a local tree farm and cut two trees each year for the river house. One for the living room and one for the dock. We brought the stockings from Tampa and hung them on the mantel there. I started collecting ornaments specifically for the river house tree. Little fuzzy animals like deer, racoons, owls, and others that we saw in our wooded yard. I strung lights everywhere: on the porch rails, the dock, even on the front gate so visitors could see where to turn into our road. The old and new traditions were melded together, especially when our children and grandchildren were at the river during the holidays.

Then our newly married younger daughter died in a car accident April 11^th, 2017. As the holiday season drew closer I dreaded even the idea of celebrating. Rachel’s birthday is on Halloween. It was on a Tuesday that year. A work day, so there was no escaping to the river. We turned off the lights on the porch and in all the front rooms and I sat on the bed and cried.

A month later we went to our older daughter’s house for Thanksgiving. Rachel’s husband was there without his bride for their first holidays together. The grandkids were a distraction, but more than once I had to leave the room to pull myself together.

As Christmas approached, my husband and I decided we would take two weeks off and spend them at the river. We didn’t put a single decoration inside or outside the Tampa house. We locked up the house on Friday night and drove 2 ½ hours in the dark to the river. Saturday, I spent most of the day in the swing on the riverbank asking God how I was supposed to survive.

The next day was Christmas Eve. My husband reminded me that the grandkids were coming over the day after Christmas and that maybe we should have a tree. It was Sunday and too late to go to the tree farm. So, we went to Lowe’s and bought the last artificial tree they had in the store without even looking at it. I took it out of the box and set it up. It had built-in lights and little pine cones attached and some of the branches looked frosted with snow. It did look pretty all lit up. I put the little woodland animals on it and set the angel on top and cried again. I didn’t hang the stockings, but I did put presents under the tree for the grands.

Christmas Day, I sat on the couch wrapped in a throw blanket embroidered with Rachel and her husband’s names that had been a wedding favor for guests. I wasn’t doing well. I blamed God.

I did better the next day when the grands came over. They are a fun rowdy bunch and were a good distraction. I cried when my older daughter gave us an ornament with her sister’s wedding picture in it. She cried, too. We hung it on the tree.

In February 2020, we sold our house and moved fulltime to the river. We brought the large box of ornaments from Tampa with us. Full of baubles, some nearly 30 years old. Full of memories.

We put up the pretty artificial tree every year. Ornaments have been added as the grandkids make them in Sunday School or friends give them as gifts. I also decorate the mantel and the porch. My husband even suggested that next year when he’s retired we put a tree and lights on the dock again. We both get nostalgic and teary-eyed each year, but then we sigh and agree that the decorations are pretty and comforting.

Still, the large box of ornaments from our old house, from our life before losing Rachel, sits unopened in the guest room closet. I know they’re just ornaments. But, they’re also memories. I have never-ending tears, but I only have so many memories. I can’t let them all out at the same time.

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Laura