PonderEthereal

“Can I spend the night?”, I asked. “Of course.. come for the weekend.” And so I packed the pup into the car and drove down. On this night, I sat up until midnight in the living room with the girls. Twas the night before Christmas. They decorated the tree, I fussed with their laptop, making it run right and I checked on mine regularly. We listened to Christmas carols and kept Tobi from peeing on everything in sight.

Eventually, we called it and I went to snuggle up in bed. I laid back with my book and began to read. But without the hubub of voices and motion around me, it began to happen… they began to leak into the sides, the edges, around corners. Thoughts, memories, questions… and finally tears.

My family wasn’t there with me. Ethan was with his dad and along with my ex, his parents, aunts, uncles and cousins and my stepdaughter were gone too. I wondered what they were doing and imagined them going about their holidays without me, never noticing. I told myself that I was imagining the worst - that there is no way any of them forgot or that the thoughts didn’t cross their mind. I remembered Christmas eves past and the tears just kept coming. I missed my family. I wanted my family so badly.

I’ve heard that grief over a loss is usually the hardest around the holidays but I guess I never really understood that. I don’t celebrate it religiously, really and so Christmas hasn’t really been a super big deal to me - except as a time for family.

Even as I cried, I knew how dysfunctional our immediate family had been. But through it all, I really tried so hard to hold it together. Dysfunctional or not, it was mine. And as ready as I was to be over Ryan, I wasn’t ready to be over my family. And here I was, on Christmas eve, without it.

I loved - no, love Ryan’s family dearly. His parents were always so great about everything and his aunt and uncle and cousins were so fun to be with. I remember once, in a fight with Ryan over Mistress, I was extraordinarily hurt that he’d been with Mistress around his dad while we were still married. He couldn’t imagine why I would be hurt over that. “They are my family”, I told him. “No they aren’t. They are MY family.” he insisted. “Don’t think you’re going to TAKE my family!”, he growled.

I was never a matter of taking them… it was a matter of keeping them. As someone who treasures closeness and love and commitment over blood, it was never a question to me that they were my family. Here, in this moment, my family by marriage was far away and I was surrounded by the love of my chosen family. I cried myself to sleep that night. The next day, I would hold back tears all morning until it finally burst through and I sobbed unabashedly in my friend’s arms as she shushed, rocked and consoled me.

Looking back, I’m able to see that the family I mourned was an ideal that I had superimposed over our family. I do still love his extended family and I am struck by sadness now and again at the loss of them. I miss my step daughter terribly. I wonder how she is, how school went, what makes her grin that wide grin she has and what makes her crinkle her nose up these days. It always seemed to change with the seasons.

But I don’t miss our immediate family anymore - in fact, it was dysfunctional and I think that it’s good that we parted ways before we inflicted any more damage on ourselves. But I do miss my family members and my ideal family. The one where we get the kids ready for school in the mornings, come home, eat dinner, do household stuff, get the kids to bed and chill together. The one where we spend holidays and weekends together doing stuff that we like to do together because we just enjoy being together. The ideal that maybe wasn’t there, really - but that I had high hopes for pulling out of the whirlwind that was our family.