Every year, I write something on the anniversary of the day my friend Stacy died. There are a lot of reasons why I’ve done this; I think the reason changes every year. Or maybe it’s different pieces of the same big reason: Stacy is still on my mind. I miss her at a lot of times, in a lot of different ways. Some years, this anniversary is harder than others, but no matter where I am emotionally, it’s always a time to pause and remember. I miss her, and even though today marks seven years, I still sometimes have a hard time grasping the fact that she’s really not here anymore. I think we’ve all done a pretty good job of keeping her memory alive — we talk about her still, we laugh about the funny things she used to say and do, we embrace the stuff she loved. But there are moments, even now, when it’s hard to believe that we don’t get to make any new memories, that the ones we have — and there are many — are all there will ever be. That’s the really hard part.
Today, I decorated the house for Christmas. It’s something I do every year, typically on the first weekend of December, and it’s something I love. Because I’m a one-holiday-at-a-time kind of person, I had to wait until after Thanksgiving to take a few hours and focus on making the space I live in look festive and beautiful. (The rooms of the house are shining with lights, and oh, there’s glitter. There’s glitter everywhere. So much glitter. I have glitter stuck to my scalp right now, even though I took a post-decorating shower.)
It seemed like the right thing to do today, to make things shine a little.
Leave a Reply