The Eternal Guest Room

The holidays are hard.

Another year has gone by, and we’re still where we were 3 years ago. We thought that by now, we’d have one more stocking to put up. We’d have someone else to buy Christmas presents for. There would be small feet in festive feety pajamas. We thought there’d be 3 of us.

We had a quiet Christmas. It was hard to think about the holiday without very sharply feeling the loss, so it was a little different than usual. We didn’t decorate, we didn’t put up a tree, we didn’t hang stockings on the fireplace. There was no Sufjan Stevens Christmas music playing in the background and no greenery scattered throughout the living room.

We did exchange presents, and we did take our annual Christmas photo. But instead of taking it in front of the tree, we took it where the tree usually is. In that corner we have a tall candle holder that holds 39 tealights. We lit them all, and that was our Christmas tree. 39 months is about the length of time we’ll have been trying to have a baby once we can start trying again (after healing from the surgery). So we found some significance in that.

We spent the afternoon with Darek’s family, and that was nice. They understand what we’re going through, and there’s comfort in that.

I’m mostly just glad Christmas is over this year.