NaNa NaNa NaNa Na Na- They Say It’s Your Birthday
Tomorrow would have been my husband’s 70th birthday. My birthday is exactly one week before his, so the the week between was always full of a lot of teasing. Jokes about my being an “older woman” and a “cradle robber”, etc. Now… What am I supposed to do?
The first few years after his death, we did pretty much what we always did to celebrate: go out to his favorite restaurant, order his favorite meal and cocktail, come home and eat his banana cream pie. We have a lot of July birthdays in our family. That’s a lot of cake, so he preferred to have pie. I would also have a lot of phone calls and e-mails of the “thinking of you” variety.
As time passed and the children began to leave home, we did less and less. At first, I would just make his favorite dinner at home. We would make a toast and maybe have banana cream pie. Now it’s pretty much just another day. We talk about it but we don’t really do anything special.
Father’s Day
Living within driving distance of a Major League ball park, every year we would get 4 sets of tickets to the game: Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Mother’s and Father’s Day. After my husband died, one of his friends gave us tickets and met us for lunch before a game. It was nice, but the thrill was gone. I haven’t been to a game since.
The thing that is really difficult about Father’s Day for me, is that my Father is still living. He and my mother live in another state, so I shop at 1-800-flowers for special Father’s Day gifts. I am getting better at it than I used to be, but card shopping still gets to me. I almost always end up crying in the greeting cards section of the grocery store. You can’t miss seeing all the “To My Wonderful Husband” cards.
As for special Father’s Day activities, they have passed down to my Son-in law and my grandchildren.
Christmas
This holiday is particularly hard. My husband LOVED Christmas. He always wanted to be involved in all the shopping. He had very specific ideas for gifts for each of our children and sometimes shocked me with his extravagance. He did the same thing with my gifts, involving the children in all of his secrets. There were rooms I couldn’t enter and questions I couldn’t ask.
He enjoyed decorating too. He always was buying something new to add to the lawn display. Christmas tree shopping was a big deal. We had to find the tree with “just the right spirit”. It was always too big for the living room and had to be cut down to size when we got it home, but we had some beautiful trees.
Our tree trimming ritual included Christmas carols on the radio or stereo, pop-corn, and a big bowl of punch. Sometimes we also had egg nog. Our tree was invariably too tall for an angel or star on top. The crowning glory was the tinsel, which my husband insisted on doing himself, placing strand after strand until he deemed it perfect.
Christmas Eve Day was busy. My husband would take the kids and go Christmas Feast shopping. Every year we would have one new thing on our table, octopus, clams, caviar, even pickled eggs. We would spend the rest of the day decorating Christmas cookies, wrapping last minute gifts and cleaning and cutting vegetables and other items for the feast, until it was time for Church.
After we got home, we would light a fire in the fire place (careful that it would be out in time for Santa), then we would start laying out the feast. While the hot items were being prepared we would open a bottle of wine, punch for the kids, and snack on crackers and cheese and smoked oysters. We would have a toast to family and friends then begin the feast in earnest.
When everyone was done eating, we would gather around the tree and my husband would read the Christmas story from the Bible, and “ The Night Before Christmas”. The kids would be allowed to open one gift (always Christmas pajamas, surprise, surprise) and I would open a new figurine for our nativity scene.
The next morning Santa’s cookies would have been eaten and the stockings hanging on the fireplace would be full. The tree would be heaped with gifts and there would be a few special items sitting out with name tags on them.
Everyone would sit in the living room while the children passed out gifts. When they were all distributed, we would take turns opening them (youngest first) so that everyone could see what the others received. While toys were being freed from their boxes and batteries were being installed, I would make Christmas breakfast.
The rest of the day was relaxing, probably watching one of the movies someone got as a gift, and packing up to go to my parents’ house the next day. It really was an ideal holiday.
Now, we still have our feast, but it’s not the same. We make a toast to the holiday and “Daddy”. We tried throwing glasses on the hearth, but that was not a very brilliant idea, so we splash a little wine on the flames in the fireplace instead. My son has tried reading the Christmas stories to the grandchildren, but they aren’t very interested. I know if “Grandpa” were here they would listen.
Our Anniversary
This one is a toughie. Every year I would get roses and we would go out to our favorite restaurant for a quiet dinner. I get jealous reading in the Sunday paper about couples celebrating milestone anniversaries. I even resent the fact that my parents have had 71 years together and I only had 27 with my “schweety”. If I cry at Father’s Day cards, I can’t go anywhere near that section of the store at anniversary time.
The year that we would have celebrated our 30th, I took my children to see “Phantom of the Opera”. When we entered the theater and presented our tickets to be seated, the usher gave me kind of a strange look, and said “Ah”. I thought that was a bit odd, but didn’t think any more of it until the chandelier came crashing down, right next to our seats, at the end of the first act. My husband would have loved that!
We were married on what was supposed to be a beautiful October day. It snowed. For quite a few years after that, no matter how warm and beautiful the weather had been, on our anniversary – it snowed. Now that he’s gone, it never snows on our anniversary anymore.
I have his ashes in my china closet. Every anniversary we share a quiet drink together.
That Day
You know the one I mean. What do you call it? Death day? The Day My Spouse Died? The Worst Day Ever? What do you do to celebrate that?
Some people used to send me cards on that day. I still get some phone calls and e-mails then. We used to go out to dinner as a family on that day, but we don’t so much anymore. Sometimes we don’t even speak of it to each other. We all know that we all know what day it is, but we just choose not to speak of it.
The first year, and maybe the second, we invited the priest that helped us so much when it happened, to go out with us. – And he came. Then it was just us, then just us at home, now nothing much at all.
Other Celebrations
There are other celebrations that have been hard, of course,- My sons’ weddings, my Daughter’s without “Daddy” to walk her down the aisle. I think maybe that is one of the reasons she waited so long to marry, even though they had been together a long time. When they finally did tie the knot they did it at an outdoor venue where there was no aisle.
And then, there are my grandchildren. Every day is a celebration of them. My husband was such a wonderful father. He was so good with children. One of the things I regret most is that he never got to share them with me, and they never had the opportunity to know him.
Your Celebrations
How do you handle the holidays? Do you have special ways to commemorate the important days in your life? What do you do to keep your loved one in your celebrations? I’d love to hear your comments.
‘Til next time… this is Kitty