Getting Through The Holidays

Dear Rachel,

Sure glad the holidays are over. Everyone said they would be tough, and everyone was right.

Lesley and I just got back from Virginia, where we spent several days with your mom and Shaylyn. How Debbie manages to keep up with a rambunctious 3-year-old I’ll never know.

It was great seeing both of them, but staying in that house was very painful. Everywhere I look there are photos of you and items that remind me of you: gifts that Les or I had sent, the sun-and-moon motif wall-hangings you loved (so much so that you got a sun-and-moon tattoo on your back!), Wizard of Oz memorabilia, and on and on. And in a place of honor in the hallway, a huge frame that contains your degree from ODU, along with your tassels and the invitations to the graduation.

God, it was hard looking at that stuff. I don’t think I could live in that house.

Which makes me think about all of those folks who—having gone through something like this—decide to make major changes: they leave spouses, quit jobs, move to another state, and so on. I’m not tempted to do any of those, but I can understand the impulse. It’s a way of starting over, and perhaps a way to say, “I can’t handle this, it hurts too damned much. I’m going to reinvent myself, and the new me won’t hurt like the old one did.”

But the new me would hurt just as much, I think. Maybe I’d be in a new house or a new state or a new job, but I’d just be hurting in a different place. There’s no running away.

Love,

Dad