Holidays... years later

Thanksgiving is only a few short days away.  The family is getting together.  Well, almost all of the family is getting together.
Dawn will not be there.

I have come to realize that the first holiday's after losing someone close to you are relatively easy compared to what comes a year or so later.  See, during the first year after losing someone you are still in shock.  I don't care if you were prepared or not.  You concentrate so much on the fact that this is the first holiday without them that you prepare yourself and do your best to stay busy.  So it might be the first Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or birthday or mother or father's day.  But it is the first and you prepare for it.

But then there is the second.  The second is harder in my opinion.  The second and third year holidays sneak up on you.  You still feel the void every day.  I miss Dawn, and that will never change.  But what happens after the "firsts" is that it dawns on you that it is the norm.  It is forever going to be normal to not have Dawn around the table on Christmas Eve.  That is the hard part.  The norm.

So now, when people lose someone, I try my best to prepare them.  I tell them keep busy that first year.  It is painfully difficult and raw.  But I tell them to also keep my number on hand (or someone they want to talk to) for that second year.

The norm is what is the hardest.  The shock protects the body, heart and mind.  The norm tears it apart every day.

I love Dawn.  I miss Dawn.
This year we walked again in her memory.  This year her son got married and is expecting a baby.  Her grandchild.  She would have been an amazing grandmother.

The norm.... it sucks.  But it helps to have people around that love you and understand the loss.  It helps to have the family still come together every Christmas Eve and sit around that table and laugh - and yes, cry too.  But mostly laugh.  So I guess the norm isn't the worst thing.  We have been through that.  The norm is just that next step that someday brings us closer to seeing Dawn.  That brings us closer to our own understanding of our life's meaning.

So maybe the norm doesn't suck, it is just meant to be.