Holidays, One Year In

I’m not expecting anything to go well at all this holiday season.

First up, Thanksgiving.  Last year, we were invited for dinner at an aunt and uncle’s house.  After the shit hit the fan, I went alone.  Everything was fresh and raw and no one talked about what was happening. Even though he was at home and we were having our own dinner later, it was as though he didn’t exist.

Then there was Christmas. Christmas was really hard. The holiday has such a focus on family, and it’s difficult to just ignore the fact that my family unit was shattered.

Was it a lonely Christmas? Yes. There was a huge part of Christmas missing, like a hole that everyone just walked around without acknowledgement.

Me, in a post a year ago

I made it clear to family that I was not going to be discussing things. While I was mostly ok with the fact that people might know the two of us weren’t “us”, I absolutely did not want anyone discussing the arrest, the raid, or the crime.  That was none of their business.

I didn’t want anyone getting anything more than “he’s not here, we are not together.” 

Those who did know assured me that boundary would be respected, and it was. No one questioned his absence, which I took as both a blessing and a curse.  I didn’t need to talk about anything, which I was thankfully for, but the fact that not a single person asked where he was was proof that everyone knew at least that he wasn’t welcome to the family shindigs any longer.

That boundary was respected up until a January birthday party, when an uncle questioned me about when I planned on moving.  A simple question, but coming from an uncle I see very rarely, it gave away the fact that everyone knew what was going on.  This was confirmed later in the spring when I visited my grandmother in the hospital and she knew everything.  When I confronted my sister about it, because she’s got constant contact with that side of the family, she said “well, we had to explain what happened because of what you posted on Facebook.” I hadn’t posted anything about what happened, other than alluding to the “not together”, and it’s unclear why she needed to know every speck of the dirt, but she did, which means everyone else did, too. 

Which brings us to the present.

Thanksgiving is in two weeks.  I haven’t heard from anyone in the family in months, aside from my mother.  My sister called a few months ago, but I was in the car and she never replied to my text when I told her I could chat.  There’s been no invites to any family dinner, which shouldn’t surprise me, but still hurts a bit.  We’re planning on cooking dinner for the two of us, with a turkey and stuffing and a couple of our favorite side dishes, maybe a pie.

As for Christmas, who knows. We’ll continue with our little family tradition of making something special for breakfast and watching “White Christmas”, snuggled on the couch together under a blanket. We can exchange gifts again.

At least this year when we put up the Christmas, it won’t be with a shadow of jail time hanging over our heads.