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<\/a>Here’s an example of a Facebook “memory” notice. But the one I received on December 25th was depressing, so I’m showing this one instead.<\/p><\/div>\n
A few minutes earlier, while still in bed, I opened my iPad to Facebook.\u00a0 The very first thing that popped up on that page was a notice of my \u201cMemories on Facebook.\u201d All of mine are the links to my week-daily columns here on ItsNotAboutMe.TV, but this particular one was a link to one I wrote on a past December 25. I couldn\u2019t believe that I had ever even posted an article on an actual Christmas Day, (because I never publish on the day of a holiday,) but four years ago, my column was to commemorate that it had been a year since my beloved little mother had died\u2026on Christmas Day!\u00a0 While Mr. X and I were visiting her.\u00a0 And I was making Christmas dinner, and expecting a lovely day for my mother, with family and friends.\u00a0 She had never had a real<\/em> Christmas before, (because my family is Jewish, and Mr. X and I had always celebrated at our home in Los Angeles,) so we were all looking forward to it.\u00a0 (You can read all the gory details elsewhere in this e-zine, but now I have to bring the room up a little.)<\/p>\n So, five years ago, in the blink of an eye, Mr. X and I went from being the biggest Christmas celebrants ever to \u201cBah Humbug\u201d people.\u00a0 I had loved this day since I began celebrating it as a teen-ager, (once I moved out on my own,) to someone who could not even bear the pain of just hearing the word.\u00a0 I began to dread the holidays.<\/p>\n One of our festive Christmas dinners in years past. Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n When the next Christmas approached, I went into a terrible depression.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what to do for us.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want to spoil it for Mr. X, but, luckily, he felt the same way.\u00a0 (He and my mother were thick as thieves; she always referred to him as her \u201cfavorite relative.\u201d\u00a0 And she was his biggest fan. He was as crushed as I was when she passed.)<\/p>\n So, that first year, we had no tree (of course,) and there was nary a decoration in sight.\u00a0 All of my precious little holiday tchotchkes stayed put in their closet.\u00a0 I sent no cards, and couldn\u2019t even bring myself to buy gifts for all my business people, for whom I had been happily making gifts bags for years!\u00a0 That had been my favorite activity all year, every year.\u00a0 I now panicked thinking about Christmas dinner, because I had always made it for just Mr. X and me.\u00a0 People had long stopped inviting us to join them, knowing by then that we liked to stay home alone, and eschew the rest of the world.<\/p>\n The beverage corner of our friends’ Christmas dinner fete. Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n And then, the Christmas Miracle of 2012 happened, which became our first baby step back to the holidays. Our wonderful friends, Fred and Jim, invited us to their<\/em> dinner!\u00a0 And it was beyond perfect.\u00a0 Besides that we had someplace to go that day, (so that we weren\u2019t alone with our depressing thoughts of that day the year earlier,) their fete was decidedly not Christmas-y at all, which was just perfect for us.\u00a0 They did<\/em> have a lightly-decorated tree in one corner, but it was not at all bright.\u00a0 And the whole place was dimly-lit, in an elegant way, which was so far from the way we<\/em> had always done it.\u00a0 The best part is that the dinner was not turkey and stuffing!\u00a0 It was classy fare, like black cod and rack of lamb.\u00a0 There was nothing on the plate for me to cry into!\u00a0 It was just a lovely dinner party, which didn\u2019t remind me of Christmas, and my mother, on any level.\u00a0 It was perfect.<\/p>\n And then, thankfully, the dreaded anniversary had passed.\u00a0 And we could move on from there.<\/p>\n For the next three years, going to Fred and Jim\u2019s, (and having nothing holiday-esque in our own house, decoration- or gift-wise,) became our new tradition.\u00a0 We were both still miserable every December 25, but it became a nano-tad easier.\u00a0 I did<\/em> break down in 2014 and purchase one small Winnie The Pooh ornament, but I didn\u2019t even remove it from the box. (Baby steps.) I put it on a counter, near a picture of my mother that I always talk to, because she would have loved this cutie, too.\u00a0 [Note: A couple of months after I lost my mother, a psychic told me that she said for me to talk to her photo, which I already was doing, and still do today.]<\/p>\n The first baby steps back to holiday decorations last year. Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n Last year, 2015, our pal, Curtis, brought us an official Charlie Brown tree.\u00a0 (A commercial one\u2014not a real one from a lot.)\u00a0 We already had two of them\u2014ours that we had bought a few years before, and the one we had given to my mother in Brooklyn, which was, very sadly, now mine.\u00a0 But we hadn\u2019t been able to bring ourselves to put them out.\u00a0 Since this new one was a gift, I figured what the heck, and we set it up in a corner of the living room, near the above-mentioned picture of my mother.\u00a0 Nobody loved A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/em> more than May Rose Salkin!!!\u00a0 And this new one even played the theme music.\u00a0 I knew she was in proverbial heaven over this new addition to the living room.\u00a0 (She was already in real<\/em> Heaven.)<\/p>\n Then, just by coincidence, my friend, Alice, bought us a delicate little set of tiny lights, which I just left near<\/em> the tree, not on<\/em> it.\u00a0 (As I said\u2014baby steps.)\u00a0 And Carol in Colorado sent us a little snow globe, which I set out near our new display.\u00a0 And that was it for last year.<\/p>\n So, now here we are in 2016, and all the same conditions applied.\u00a0 Only this time, we actually put those tiny lights on<\/em> the tree.\u00a0 And added to the petite display a bit, whenever a kind pal contributed to it, even with just a holiday card.<\/p>\n My beautiful stocking that I decorated myself at Chill at the Queen Mary! Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n The next baby step came with my Media Night visit to Chill at the Queen Mary.\u00a0 One of the activities there was decorating a stocking, and I must admit that I really got into it.\u00a0 Mine is really beautiful!\u00a0 (But I chose a blue<\/em> one, rather than green or red\u2014baby steps.)\u00a0 I had also received a tiny blue stocking when I arrived, which contained my tickets for the evening.\u00a0 So, a couple of days later, I could not resist displaying those two, just so that I could tell Mr. X that mine<\/em> was the big gorgeous one, and his<\/em> was, as my mother would have called it, the little weeny one!\u00a0 For that purpose, I had to put up our tiny Haitian rendition of a Christmas tree. (It\u2019s flat and made of metal, and hangs on the wall.) It had remained hidden away in the same place for many years, but was now missing. That search for it was yet another baby step.\u00a0 (But Mr. X and I agreed that the stockings would stay empty, because we could still not bear to do gifts yet.)<\/p>\n Then we gradually added holiday music into the mix. I still felt a tad guilty, belting out tunes like Jingle Bell Rock<\/em>, but I could hear my mother saying, \u201cStop being so crazy, Karen! I love that music.\u201d<\/p>\n As I mentioned, for most of the years that Mr. X and I have been together, I cooked Christmas dinner for just the two of us. (And Clarence, too, of course, until he was no longer with us in 2010.) And that was just the way we liked it. But, because I was doing that exact activity in Brooklyn five years ago when my mother got sick, and then left this level of life, I haven\u2019t been able to bring myself to do it since then. But this<\/em> year, Fred and Jim, the founders of our feast for the past four years, were out of town! And nobody else we know does anything for Christmas! We were forced<\/em> to be alone now, which had always been our choice, but now I was dreading it! I could not bear to cook that meal, and Mr. X absolutely hates going out, especially on Christmas Day! All month long, I kept begging him to help me figure it out. I didn\u2019t want to be caught in a bad depression that day, and needed to make a plan. But we could not come up with anything reasonable.<\/p>\n Our little tree, and its pals, this year. Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n Finally, on the 24th, he suggested that we just have Chinese food, as many others of my ethnicity traditionally do on Christmas. (And as the family in A Christmas Story<\/em> does when a dog eats the meal they had cooked.) But he wanted to have it delivered<\/em>, as opposed to going out<\/em> for it, which just would not have been the same. So, we were still somewhat in a quandary as to what to do the next day to avoid the expected pain.<\/p>\n Then, that evening, I realized that we had not yet gotten a memorial candle for my mother! (It\u2019s what my people do to commemorate the death of a loved one.) So, it was over to the supermarket for us. (And I bumped into a fun old pal there, so it was already a winning day for me!) While we were there, I realized there\u2019s a vegetable dish I began making last fall, when I needed to start cooking (for my health,) and it involved cranberries, so I had better get some right then, before they run out after the holiday. After that, we innocently walked over to the service deli, and lo and behold, there were perfect-sized chunks of freshly-cooked turkey! So, we decided what the heck, and purchased that, too, on spec. Some yams and corn later, (I already had stuffing, potatoes, gravy, marshmallows, and nuts at home,) and voila–we had built a proper Christmas dinner, Stone Soup<\/em>-style! [Note: That\u2019s one of my favorite children\u2019s books. If you don\u2019t know the story, you really should look it up.]<\/p>\n I still didn\u2019t know if I would cook any of it the next day, mind you, but at least it was comforting to know it was all there, if we needed it. (And the baby step of going shopping for the holiday fare was out of the way.)<\/p>\n How we used to do Christmas, in happier times. (You can see a bit of that Father Christmas blanket in the upper left corner.) Photo by Karen Salkin.<\/p><\/div>\n I spent this past October on the east coast, and had bought some little \u201c in general\u201d gifts for Mr. X. But, because I\u2019m the world\u2019s worst un<\/em>-packer, I still had not given them to him as late as mid-December! In the back of mind, I had thought they would make good little Christmas presents for him, even though I knew we didn\u2019t do that kind of thing anymore.<\/p>\n And then, a couple of nights before the 25th, I told him I had them for him, and before I could even ask if he wanted them right then, he said, \u201cI have a few for you, too.\u201d So, after several minutes of \u201cshould we\u201ds, we decided to give them to each other on Christmas Day. But this was not even close to our old ritual, of giving each other about fifty<\/em> gifts, with gorgeous, fun wrapping, sitting on a Father Christmas blanket under the tree, snacking on popcorn and sparkling cider. And getting up at 5AM to get it all done by 10AM! No, this was a couple of already-owned gift bags, a piece of colored tissue paper here and there, and just sitting on the couch, by a tiny table, at about noon. Bing, bang, boom, and it was over. Easy breezy. It was exactly perfect. We would\u2019t have wanted anything more, and these few \u201cbaby step\u201d gifts were successful. It was such a relief. (And I know my mother would have approved. She<\/em> wasn\u2019t torturing me\u2014I<\/em> was!)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>