Christmas Season

We are now six Christmases in and I have yet to celebrate Christmas again.  I have managed a small tree for a few of those years and in 2014 I understood fully why I just couldn't do Christmas but even in the early stages of catastrophic grief I believed Christmas would come back for us in a year or two.  It is surprising even to me that six seasons later I am still not having Christmas.  

I have worried that it was a rebellion of sorts stemming from an unrecognized underlying anger with God but I really did not "feel" angry anymore and don't feel that I would ever do that so I really couldn't understand why I was actually, intentionally balking at having any kind of Christmas celebration.  Last year I actually felt like Christmas could possibly "come back".  I was a little enthusiastic about decorating and even purchased a new smaller tree but then December 3, my sister went to the hospital with pneumonia.  When she got to the ER by ambulance her fever was over 105 and she went into a coma and ended up in ICU on life support for 15 days.  Waking up by nothing less that a pure miracle on Christmas Eve --the entire month of December missing from her life.  It took six months of therapy to get her mobile and back to maybe 75%.  She will never really fully overcome that huge setback.  

So this year I was fully expecting to have Christmas on track full steam again.  Not.

I have less enthusiasm than I had last year.  It seems Christmas returning is farther away than it was four years ago.  And I have been totally baffled as to why.  This morning I read a devotional that I get by email daily.  It was about Christmas.  It really ended up being nothing about anything remotely familiar to my life and yet the beginning of it hit me like a brick -- an epiphany of sorts and suddenly I realized what my deal with Christmas is actually about.  It is not, as I had worried, a rebellion towards God or what Christmas stands for at all.  It is about what Christmas had become for me.

As a child I was such a dreamer.  I was beside myself over Christmas every year.  The promise that it held of the latest and greatest new toy being advertised on TV, a family outing to pick out a tree, everyone gathering to decorate it, the lights, the beautiful packages with ribbons and bows.  And of course every year I prayed for snow.  I live in Atlanta, Georgia - never in my life did I see a white Christmas but it didn't stop me from praying for it in rapt anticipation year after year.  I stared out the window into the darkness late into the night Christmas Eve looking for Santa's sleigh.  I imagined of my mother putting out cookies and milk for Santa and the family gathering around and singing Christmas Carols as we hung stocking on our fireplace.  I was a hopeless dreamer.

I was the oldest of four children born to two alcoholic parents Christmas for us was about as far from my Norman Rockwell dream as it could get.  

My mother always saw to it that we always had a tree and toys.  And I should have been more thankful for what we did have I guess.  But it wasn't toys I longed for.  It wasn't greed that fueled my disappointment.  I wanted "family".  I wanted normal.  I wanted the things money could not buy.  I wanted my mother home for Christmas.  I wanted us all gathered around the table for a festive Christmas dinner together.  I wanted us to spend time together baking cookies, wrapping gifts, singing carols.  But she never was.  She was gone.  Almost every Christmas eve as long as I could remember - sometimes she worked, sometimes she was just gone all Christmas Eve.  We never saw her till Christmas Day - grouchy, half asleep and hungover.  

We were left with Daddy and Daddy was crazy-mean when he was drunk.  Our Christmas Eve was spent wondering what lay in store for us before morning.  Were we going to be beaten or were one of our pets going to be abused or killed.  And Christmas for some reason brought out the absolute worst in him.  Ghosts from his raising I'm sure.  So we had memorable Christmases but not the kind Norman Rockwell would paint about.  

One memorable Christmas Eve, while Mama was working of course, he gathered all of four of us into the car (usually in pajamas, barefooted and without coats) and informed us we were going for a ride.  It was his thing to get drunk and want to drive around - a particularly terrifying event for all of us.  He drove around for about a half hour and then pulled down a dead end street and parked the car.  He turned off all the lights, opened the door and got out which was also very typical of these late night rides.  And he disappeared into the darkness leaving all four of us in the cold, dark car wondering what was coming next.  When he returned we heard him open the trunk of the car, fumble around, cuss and then he pulled open the drivers door and got in.  He was carrying the 38 caliber pearl-handled pistol that he had dubbed "Old Smoky" that always seemed to appear when he had a few drinks.  For a little added drama, he had a glove he also had taken from the trunk of the car and tossed it into the back seat to my sister closest to me in age and demanded she check it out and tell him what she found.  

She answered, "bullets Daddy."  

"How many?" he demanded.  

"Five" she said.  

"Yes, he agreed.  Five; one for each of you and one for your mother."  

We all started to cry and ask why?  What had we done?  

No answer.  He got out of the car again and disappeared into the dark as all of us sat there frozen waiting for the shooting to begin.

Then he later comes back to the car and without another word cranks the car and heads for home.

Another Christmas Eve while yet again Mama was "gone".  He put us to bed early and then around 1:00 am came and woke us all up and had us open all of our dresser drawers and empty the contents onto the floor.  Where then he instructed us to take them to the kitchen and place them into the washer to wash the clean clothes.  When they were washed, dried and folded he dumped them into the floor and said, "Now do it again till you get it right."  So we washed clothes, clean clothes, all night until daybreak Christmas morning.

There were Christmases where we had to leave home and interrupt some relatives Christmas begging them to let us stay with them because he was in a drunken rage and we had no where to go.  There were Christmases where the police came and hauled him away in handcuffs with all of the neighborhood kids watching.  

Yes, our Christmases were always memorable albeit in a "Stephen King" sort of way.  

And yet, every single year like an idiot, without fail I had hope anew that "this year" we'd suddenly wake up in a normal home and Christmas would be wonderful.  

When I left home at 14 we had still not turned into the Cleavers.  

But I determined that when I had a family of my own and it was entirely up to me - my kids would have the perfect Christmas of my dreams. Perfect of course does not exist but I tried.  God knows, I tried.

We had no money so I started Christmas shopping in July buying one or two things at a time.  I hid gifts, I wrapped gifts.  I made handmade bows.  I planned family outings to a tree farm where we went up and down rows and rows of ridiculously priced trees to find the perfect one.  I slowly over the years collected little old fashioned wooden ornaments and carefully wrapped and packed them every year like they were fine crystal and when I pulled the out the next year it was almost a "holy event" as we carefully lifted the little wooden toy ornaments along with whatever hand made ornaments my children had made that year in school.  I'd fix snacks and we'd have a little mini-party as we put on Christmas music and all decorated the tree as a family.  It was several years before we had a house with a real fireplace but once we did, I'd string live pine garland with mini-lights the length of the mantle with big red bows and all of the kids stockings.  We'd pile packages under the tree and make games out of trying to keep my middle child from peeping into his gifts before Christmas.  In later years I baked Christmas cookies and made homemade fruitcakes and divinity, the menu and the guest list grew as our little Christmas Eve party gained momentum.  

My children got married and grand kids came along and we added stockings to the mantle and our Christmases got large and loud and messy and wonderful.  We began inviting anyone that had no place to go on Christmas.  We bought extra gifts and always had tons of food.  Soon my children numbered 17 and Christmas had grown to about 30 to 40.  Then life and divorces happened. Schedules became complicated when my boys both had to fight for a few hours with their children on Christmas Eve.  Geography and time constraints and the whims of ex-wives made our Christmases begin to be stressful and difficult and everyone began to seem on edge.  The last Christmas we all had as a family 2013 working a full time job and driving 3 and a half hours a day in Atlanta traffic meant I had to work on getting Christmas together for weeks a little at a time.  I planned.  I decorated.  I cooked.  I wrapped.  And Christmas came and everyone seemed to just be in a hurry to leave.  They ate.  Unwrapped gifts and all began to get up and get ready to leave.  My son came from four hundred miles away to stay one hour and the two local children and all of their children said they had to go because they were all getting together and going to see a movie.  It was their "Christmas Tradition" now to all go see a movie on Christmas Day.  So they all left and I sat alone in the middle of all of my weeks of Christmas Crap and cried the rest of the afternoon and vowed I would never do "all this" again. 

And I never have.  That was the last Christmas I was to ever have my entire family and it was also the Christmas that I realized that Christmas as we had always known it --was over.  Truly over.  

It was not something any of them wanted --a big traditional family Christmas  --was my dream because it was something I had never had as a child.  It was never theirs.  They had always had it so to them it was no more than an aggravating annual obligation that they could not wait to get away from.  

Kids grow up.  Grand kids grow up.  Life changes.  Traditions change.  It was heartbreaking and on top of everything else I had to grieve, I also grieved the loss of our family Christmas.  And so I haven't had Christmas since 2013.  

And I realized this morning that opting out of Christmas was never a rebellion.  It was just the end of an era.  One that's time had passed.  Family get-togethers, I had assumed, much like fruitcake and homemade bread, are a thing of the past.  They still have family traditions like going to a movie on Christmas Day and even family get-togethers at Christmas.  I'm just no longer a part of their family now...

The View From the Caboose...

I have mentioned in several posts as well as in personal conversation how I relate the events of this past year to being hit by a hundred-car freight train.  We have passed the First Year anniversary and here is a look back at the freight train that plowed through my life in 2014. 

The Engine – My sister and best friend was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and there were at least 25 cars attached to that alone as I watched my sister and my best friend my whole life go through the most devastating all-consuming "vacuum" that sucked what used to be her life into a dark and spiraling black hole.  Fatal disease, 21-day hospital stay, having to move out of her home and completely away from her pets, her church and her grandchildren and in with a 24 hour a day caregiver, 100-days in the bone marrow transplant unit every single day for 6 to 12 hours a day while she is poked and prodded and little pieces of her literally sliced away, four types of high-dose chemotherapy; hair loss; mouth sores; nausea; diarrhea; high dose total body irradiation, multiple painful bone marrow biopsies, bone marrow transplant, my niece being the donor and having to go through all that entailed, graft vs. host disease of the skin, lungs and eyes,  dangerous/life-threatening treatments including high doses of steroids, at least eighteen other scary medications, UVA light treatments, three different dangerous viruses, complications of diabetes and liver disease.  I am committed to be her caregiver for at least the next six months and six weeks into her treatment and a mind-numbing schedule…the rest of the cars begin to hit.

·        There is a death in my immediate family – Huge.  But not just a death but the death of my child. And not just the death of my child which would have been horrific alone but my youngest son, my 29-year old daughter in law and my 2 ½ year-old grandbaby – the child I have cared for and helped raise since his birth --are all gone. 

·        It is a tragic, horrific death – all three found shot in their home and not found for more than thirty-six hours.

·        I now have a grueling schedule trying to care for my sister – without a brain and a body that doesn't work.  I am so devastated I cannot function.  I cannot grieve or cry or curl up in the bottom of the closet like I want to.  Yet I am incapable of doing the job I have committed to and my sister's life depends on it. Guilt. Fear. Devastation.

·        The captive audience and brunt of my raging anger is my very sick sister that I love desperately and fear losing.  Guilt.

·        We were never allowed to see any of them and because of the condition of the bodies they could not have a traditional funeral and burial.

·       They say it was a murder/suicide committed by my son!  Impossible.  They don’t know him.  This cannot be true.  But they will not listen or investigate for any other possibilities.  They have made up their minds and they are done.

·        Because of the situation and the belief that Brian did this –

o   There is instant breakdown between the families - understandably.

o   They will be separated forever.  Kara and the baby in one state and Brian in another.

o   We do not even get to attend the memorial service for the daughter in law I loved nor the baby I adored. 

o   “We” actually feel guilt, remorse and shame even though we did nothing and do not even believe for one minute that Brian did this.

·        There is strong evidence that suggests it was a staged suicide and a possible hit on their lives:

o   Weeks later we hear from Kara's mom that Kara told friends and family over a year ago about an incident that happened where an acquaintance of Brian’s young adult son came to their door high on something and looking for trouble when Brian refused to let his son go out and called the police to the boy he left screaming threats: “This is not over. I will come back and kill you and your whole ^&^%*$ family!” 

o   Fear was the reason Kara asked for a gun.

o   The only ground-floor window was unlocked and partially open, hidden from the street view behind tall, thick shrubbery while all of the doors in the house were locked and dead-bolted.

o   Only two spent bullet casings were ever found. 

o   The missing bullet casing was from the shot that killed Brian - the last one alive; so how exactly does that happen? And why was this not a red-flag?

o   Though Brian is an avid writer – no suicide note is ever found.

o   Nothing was wrong in his life; we talked to both he and Kara just hours before and everything was fine.  They had plans to take the baby to a birthday party the next day and he called me asking what time we would be home so he could come over and bring the baby for a visit afterward.

o   According to the investigators, they had “all” put on pajamas and gone to bed. And no one found this even a tiny bit odd?

o   There was no reference to any domestic issues on their phones, I-Pad or computer – just sweet bantering back and forth between Brian and Kara the same afternoon this happened.  Why were these items not taken as evidence for the investigation?

·       We begged the county sheriff’s department for ten months to give us all of the information about the investigation that led them to this determination.  We were told the GBI would be heading up the investigation and there would be a ballistics test, a toxicology screen, an autopsy and a report of the findings would be sent to them upon completion.  Somewhere around four weeks later in a call to the GBI we find out that none of that is true. Four weeks after the bodies have all been cremated and after Serve-Pro has cleaned and decontaminated the house – destroying any evidence.  I demanded a meeting with all of the investigators --twice and all we got was “cover your ass” answers and even blatant lies.

·       They did not take finger-prints or physical evidence from around the open window, ballistics tests or test for blood evidence that proved Brian was the shooter.

·        They offered no explanation for why the other shell casing was never found.  Small room, wood floors and Serve Pro completely emptied it and went through every inch of it and no bullet casing was ever found. The Sergeant actually said and I quote. “Giving you closure is not our responsibility.  All we need is cause and manner of death and we have that.”

·        WSB TV showed up on the scene, then stole from Kara's Facebook account, my copyrighted photographs of the family taken in my yard the fall before and blasted this horror all over National Television – before we could even notify family.

·        Brian’s children had to be told by phone for fear they would see it on the news.

·        One of the best dads that I ever knew was now left with the most horrible legacy imaginable.

·        The entire free world now saw him as a monster.

·        That legacy spilled over onto what was left of my family as friends and even some relatives turned away from all of us in hatred and disgust and said horrible things about Brian on Facebook hurting his children as if this horrific tragedy was not bad enough.

·        I am devastated and in disbelief that people actually do not think that I should love or mourn the loss of my son.

·        We have to hold a private Memorial service and hire security to keep the news crews out.

·        We live in a small town.  Everywhere we go strangers ask us about it, stare at us and even point.  I no longer feel comfortable in the town that I have made my home for 23 years.

·        A formal company-wide announcement was made on my job.  That was comfortable.  I have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

·        Guilty by association - “We” are treated as if we are guilty by the Coroner’s office, the Sheriff’s Department, the GBI.  We are given no information, no consideration, no respect and certainly no sympathy.  There is the family of the victims of this God-awful tragedy…and then there is us.

·        I actually feel guilt with regards to Kara’s family because they believe my son caused their loss.

·        We quickly realize there is no justice for Brian – no matter how we fight.  No one is going to do anything to try and prove his innocence because their minds are made up.  A judgment call made on a gruesome crime scene in about fifteen minutes will leave a tragic legacy for him and the rest of us completely destroyed.  They have been his accuser, witness, judge and jury with a very biased point of view.  Sentence is passed – guilty.  He is guilty.  We are guilty by association.  They half do their jobs, piss away evidence, release the scene and allow any evidence of a crime to be destroyed. They lie to us about what has been done that proves this. Without knowing him, without giving him the benefit of the doubt, because of the horror of the scene they let their opinions of him get in way of them doing their jobs.

·        The house is contaminated with hazardous bacteria and all of their personal belongings have to be thrown out.  There are no clothes, no shoes - absolutely nothing “personal” left to us.  All of the baby’s clothes and shoes, his beloved blanket, his binkies and the handmade heirloom memories – made and given by both grandmothers - gone.  The house looks as if he never even existed.  There is no evidence anywhere of the beautiful little boy that graced our lives for 2 ½ years.  As if he had just been erased.

·        There is no will so his two older children are left not knowing who the next of kin is. They have no idea how to file an estate and since no one actually now owns it, no one can legally sell the house. 

·        There is no insurance.  The children cannot pay for his service or cremation.

·         My heart breaks for his other two children.  They are lost in a sea of grief and confusion.

·         My heart breaks for my daughter who has to oversee the decontamination and clean-up of her beloved family’s home.  Meeting with Serve-Pro discussing gut-wrenching details of things no one should ever have to see or hear.

·         We have the sad job of having to find homes for their two dogs.

·         My daughter and I are left with a huge physical and financial mess trying to intervene and sort out everything, deal with the personal property, the bills, calling the creditors, the house, the stray belongings left unclaimed in the house.

·         We have to start foreclosure proceedings on the house in order to be able to do anything with it and get out from under the bills that keep piling up and the yard maintenance. 

·         In the wake of the worst tragedy one can imagine we hire a lawyer for help and he decides like everyone else that we are in a vulnerable position and he decides to capitalize on our tragic circumstances so he bills us 2 ½ times the price he originally told me it would cost to handle the standard foreclosure - and it was, regardless of the circumstances, just a standard foreclosure to him.

·        Since there was no will the home that he and Kara worked so hard on has to be sold on the courthouse steps for a fraction of what it is worth; leaving very little to his children and it was split four ways with Kara's parents.

·        All of the things the children or Kara’s sister did not take is still sitting in my building.  Six truckloads.  I now have the gut-wrenching job of going through it and then trying to “dispose” of what is left of my children’s lives.

·        From the fallout of this – I have lost the friend that I have shared the most intimate parts of my life with for the past 37 years.

·        I have lost many friends and relatives through this.

·        It has changed my perspective on EVERYTHING until I don’t even recognize who I am anymore.

·        It has aged me by ten years at least.

·        I have had a huge faith crisis through this and consequently have little security still as to who God really is in light of this horrific tragedy.  I have a difficult time knowing what to pray for and why.  I have a difficult time believing all I read and hear about God’s protection.  Though I am better, I am still left feeling very vulnerable and empty at times.

·        It has threatened my other son’s marriage.

·        It has left me with a huge insecurity as far as how I feel about law enforcement.

·        It has left me feeling as if I do not belong in my home town and I am living in limbo not knowing where to go now.  This was my home.

·        There are actually family members that now avoid us and refuse to come to our home because it, and we, remind them of this loss and horrific tragedy.

·        I have had my feelings hurt over the people that I thought were friends that have completely deserted me through all of this. 

·        I myself am avoiding people that I care about that used to be in my life because I do not know how to tell them this.

·        And it is our belief that there is a killer walking free.

      So this is why I say it is like being hit by a train.  The hurts, the tragedies, the devastation, the insults, the guilt, the changes, the horrors like the separate cars of a freight train just kept on plowing over us one right behind the next for the whole entire year.

The holiday season approaches…

Well Thanksgiving came and went and thank God, it wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated.  On the actual day of Thanksgiving – we did not do our traditional family dinner.  Donald and I sat alone in the house all day and ate a leftover hamburger!  Now for the die-hard traditionalist --that is a first.  But two of my grandsons had other plans and would not be able to come so as opposed to having any additional empty chairs – we opted to move our traditional Thanksgiving dinner to Saturday.  My daughter came to help on Friday and we spent the entire day together which was good I think for both of us.  Saturday – I had some free time before everyone arrived and I got the crying out of the way.  It served as a pressure release and I was able to do dinner without a melt-down as I was able to put the sadness on the back burner.  She and I had talked about the loss of the kids and the situation a lot on Friday while we were alone and it kind of got it behind us and although all of us thought about them, everyone seemed to do all right.  I am still very relieved it is over.  I had dreaded it for weeks.

I was home for the four day holiday weekend and it has not been easy but it was okay for the most part. I’ve had my moments but I am learning that that is to be expected as apparently ‘this’ is my new normal; periodically crying, uncontrollably –at random unexpected times and in random unexpected places--maybe forever?  But other than thinking I am losing it --I'm good.

This has truly been the worst year of my entire life.  And one of the things that I was “thankful” for during our Thanksgiving meal was that 2014 is nearly over! 

It has been one nightmare after the other.  January – we got caught up in the ice storm that paralyzed the city as the four million people that usually jam our roads every day during our 3:00 - 7:00 rush "hour" --all tried to leave the city at the same time --in ice.  They jammed the entire city with thousands of stranded cars --some stranded for days and most didn't get home that night.  My husband and I spent the night in our car in a grocery store parking lot in a scary section of town (with about 100 other cars and two school buses!) in 18 degree weather with no food, water or bathroom.

We came home to find our neighbors two 90 lb dogs attacked our little 30 lb 10 year old dog and she was bitten multiple times and in shock and terrific pain.

In February my 44 year old son in law had a heart attack.  He was all right thank God but required testing, treatment and several days in the hospital. (they had no insurance…)

My mother's best friend, Rachel a part of my life as long as I can remember, passed away fifteen years to the day at the exact same time as my mother.

In March I had a car wreck – my first in over 35 years a miracle in itself considering I typically drive about 100 miles a day in a city of 4,000,000 of some of the worst drivers in some of the worst traffic in the U.S. 

There was a shake up in my department at work and my boss was removed from his position and was no longer my boss after 6 years.   So I decided to take another position in a completely different department.  It was a good move for me but still a very emotional, sad and stressful transition.

April, we moved into a rental house that has had one issue right behind the next - the traffic is a nightmare, the roof was leaking, large dead trees falling in the yard and this was the third such move in 6 years. 

May, my unmarried, 18 year old granddaughter happily announced that she was pregnant.   

June, my sister was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia.  

July, she and her husband moved in with us, I became her full time caregiver requiring we spend four to six hours a day in the bone marrow transplant clinic for a yet undetermined amount of time on an emotional roller coaster during what promises to be a long and arduous recovery from a stem cell transplant.

Several of the neighborhood dogs attacked and killed my daughter’s little Pomeranian that had been a huge part of our family for many years.

August, during a really scary complication with my sister, my brother in law accidently let my timid little Siamese cat out and she has never been seen again. 

Then just weeks before my sister’s transplant the unimaginable happened that made the rest of the year seem like a day at the park.  I lost my son, my daughter in law and the baby boy I adored in a violent, and most devastating triple tragedy leaving us all the misery of never knowing the truth about what happened because of a  botched  investigation that left my son to forever bear the blame. 

September, as icing on the proverbial cake, one of my very best friends and I parted ways after 37 years of being almost as close as sisters.

October, Joan had the dreaded Bone Marrow/Stem Cell transplant and 100 straight days of almost daily clinic visits for 4 to 6 hours a day.  Attempting to keep her in a germ-free, bacteria-free, fungus-free environment because she has no immune system.

November, Graft vs. Host disease, two diabetic seizures, three potentially deadly viruses, four different medical offices  --and a partridge in a pear tree.


December, Paxton's third birthday and the first Christmas in my adult life that I will not have my children with me and I will not, in fact, celebrate Christmas at all.   

That hits every major stressor on the scale and the worst one -- three times. 

I will be so glad to see 2014 in the rear-view mirror.   

New Years Eve will be one holiday I am looking forward to celebrating!