I subbed in a kindergarten classroom this week. I am a mother who left her child’s body in a school. I am the parent of a child who suffered with mental illness and know how nearly impossible the diseases can be to correctly deal with. I am in public schools almost daily and the prospect of a school shooting is always in the back of my mind. My sister lives not far from Newtown, CT and her kids were in lockdown yesterday.
The Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, while not a personal loss for me, has left me in tears with fresh wounds and raw emotions.
It is Christmas. I had planned to bake cookies today, and to finish decorating our tree. If only to force myself to break away from the TV coverage, I followed through with the plan.
The cookies, from my Great Grandmother’s recipe, were a life-long favorite of my mother’s, so I was making them partially to honor both of them. As I rolled out the dough and cut the cookies out, re-living fun childhood Christmases doing the exact same thing and fragile from the coverage of the school shooting, my personal losses were tangibly present. As I cried over the growing pile of baked trees, stars and snowmen, the smell alone was more pain that I wanted to bear.
And then decorating the tree. Good God, what was I thinking. Every ornament a memory. Baby’s First Christmas, given to me by my Dad’s mom. Molly’s arts and crafts ornaments. Fond memories from vacations. Some millennium ornaments. A New York skyline ornament that includes the Twin Towers. Some incredible hand made pieces that my mom crafted. I wouldn’t part with one of them; but I cried as I hung them on the tree. Each one, initially selected to cement joyful memories, proclaimed a loss.
Today I mourned. For myself. For the families in CT. For all of us who are dealing with devastating pain. And I reminded myself of a bitter Christmas reality: there is always loss in this holiday. Surely, the Biblical stories don’t shy away from pain (see Matthew 2: 16 – 18 for an example.) But in our time, too, we know that the peace and hope of the Christmas season exists squarely in the darkness and challenge of our own lives.
The past comes to live in the present through memories, recipes and ornaments. It’s not enough. I want my child back. But today in particular, I am convinced that mourning and celebrating are part and parcel of the same thing: an awareness that our short lives will hold both devastating loss and unspeakable joy. The peace comes, sometimes, from recognizing the one in the other.
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