Today I spent much of the day trying to put away all the Christmas decorations. We always put everything up the weekend after Thanksgiving, and then took it all down the weekend after Christmas. I think it’s going to take me longer than a weekend. I had to take a break and rake leaves for a while in the middle. Fall is really here and the two big oaks out front are losing all their leaves.
This year was not as hard as last year. Until I started trying to put everything away. There are so many things that were gifts to Cindy. She collected Snowmen (and snow women) and we tried to keep the boxes for packing them away. Many of those boxes have the gift tags so we knew who they were from. Somehow seeing all those tags To: Cindy with love from “someone who loved Cindy” hit me unexpectedly. I only got as far as getting everything off the tree so I could get it out for the garbage man.
This year has been better than last. We had some fun this year. I was looking forward to Christmas morning to see what the girls thought of the surprise gifts I got them. I got some surprise gifts too. I think we had a good time. I enjoyed it more this year. I hope it continues to get better. I still miss her desperately. But I don’t feel the loss continuously now. I look forward to the day when the loss is even more infrequent and the happy memories start fill that place.