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As the third holiday season without Ryan approaches, I find the holidays aren’t as ominous as they were the first two years of our loss. Thank goodness. There’s lightness in my heart that wasn’t there the first two awful years. There is still a catch in my heart when I think of next week, Thanksgiving week when Ryan should be flying home, so I try not to think about it. I have actually bought a couple of Christmas gifts and looked through a few of the Christmas catalogs that clog my mailbox every day. The holidays will never be the same and our level of joy will never reach the high water marks of our old life but I’m so grateful for the wee bit of relief from the heaviness and crushing sadness.

I have previously written about the first holiday season without Ryan. The second one was only marginally easier, if any. We didn’t even put up a Christmas tree for the first time in our 29 years of marriage. I hung some fairy lights on the ficus tree and put the few gifts I purchased beneath it. Both Ross and I came down with a bad case of the flu. I got the bug on Christmas Eve and Ross on Christmas day. It was a miserable time and I was glad when it was over.

We had discussed going away for Christmas, thinking a change of scenery might allow us to endure the holly, jolly season a little better without the jolliest member of our family here. But in the end we decided that ‘wherever you go, there you are”. We couldn’t leave our broken hearts at home. So we stayed home and did the best we could, which wasn't great.

Now here we are in year 3 and it's better. Time is an amazing elixir.

I have become friends with 5 moms who lost children earlier this year, from June to September. My heart breaks for them as I vividly identify with what they are going through. The 5 month anniversary, the 6 month anniversary, death dates - the 25th of each month, the 16th of each month, and the 10th of each month – painful reminders of all they have lost. I cringe when I think of their pain. There isn’t much I can do to help them. I just try to be their friend and walk beside them on this long, lonely, excruciating journey. I would take their grief for a day to let them rest from it if I could, just as my friends would have done for me. I want to tell them the third year gets better but I’m hesitant to do so because two years seems like an eternity when you don’t think you can survive two more hours, much less two more years. They are facing this first holiday season without their children and it hurts so very much.