Live your beautiful life, baby (December 31, 2022)

In my widow support groups, there's a lot of discussion about coping with the holidays, especially the first one after losing our loved ones. I approached this year's holiday season with some dread, not knowing how I would be able to cope emotionally. 

Last Christmas, Scott's family came to Baltimore since Scott needed to stay near home to get blood transfusions for his low hemoglobin. We got him a transfusion one morning and then headed to the Airbnb where the family was staying. Scott was often tired after a transfusion, so he took a nap at the house and told us not to wait on him since we had a gingerbread house decorating contest that afternoon. 

I had been doing mostly OK so far, but as I looked down the dining room table at the couples and families putting together their gingerbread houses, I knew that this was my future, that one day Scott would no longer be with me on Christmas. This realization hit so hard that I wasn't sure if I was up for doing the gingerbread house. I decided that I could at least start by constructing it, and by then Scott got up and joined us, so we were able to decorate it together. He was the creative visionary, and I was his hands. We started with the roof, and Scott had me decorate it with rows of red and green candy. Then things got a little weird. We added a decoration that Scott decided looked like an evil third eye, and we made the front of the house into a face with red eyes and green teeth, chomping on a gingerbread man as his gingerbread friend looked on in horror. 

Oh no!

 

View of the roof

 

I didn't think that gingerbread horror would be a crowd-pleaser, but that was irrelevant. This was about making something with Scott. I did my best to ice a freaked out expression on the gingerbread friend's face. We were running out of time, so I quickly decorated the back of the house in a more traditional style, which Scott described as "a nice family house that raises property values." That gingerbread house was our final creative collaboration, one that captured our crazy and beautiful partnership. Also we won the contest which was blind judged by relatives; it turns out that gingerbread horror can win the day after all. That Christmas memory is bittersweet because it was my final one with Scott, but it still makes me smile each time I think of it.

The back of the house, "a nice family house that raises property values"

 

This Christmas had its difficult moments. I cried when opening gifts with each side of the family and it still felt deeply wrong that Scott wasn't there. But I also had many good moments, especially when interacting with my nieces and nephews. Miyo still remembers her Uncle Scott giving her Magic cards in a Curious George lunchbox (she was very intrigued by his Magic cards when she visited our house and saw his collection). I met Todd and Melissa's baby Peter for the first time. I felt surrounded by love with both families this Christmas.

Now I am headed into 2023, my first new year without Scott. I am still in the process of grieving. I have some new adventures planned, including moving into a new house and several family trips. I don't exactly feel hopeful yet, but I feel the need to try and live my life as fully as possible. I've been listening to Anderson Cooper's wonderful podcast on grief (https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/all-there-is-with-anderson-cooper), which resonates with so much of what I've been feeling. In one of the later episodes, the writer Elizabeth Alexander shares that her dying father's last words to her were, "Live your beautiful life, baby." I've thought about those words a lot, perhaps because this is what Scott wanted for me. He told me to take my time coming to him and encouraged me to go on many adventures in the meantime.

A few weeks ago I saw a quote that is often attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald, but apparently was written by the screenwriter for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Scott didn't have a high opinion of this movie, but I think he would have agreed with this sentiment: "I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."