As I sit at a dead stop watching a train go by at a railroad crossing on a back road in Kentucky, I think of the crossroad I am at of two very painful holidays this year. One holiday down, one more to go! I can’t help from be impatient in my seat anxious for the cross bars to come up so that I can move on. It is the same kind of wait for the holidays to pass.

Christmas has always been my most favorite holiday. I love everything about Christmas. The lights, the decorations, the baking of cookies and sweets, and the giving. I love to give! As I finish dropping off gifts for children in need in the area, as I finish gathering gifts for my friends and family, there is only a numb feeling on my insides. I move through the motions. I do the things I think I am supposed to, the things that brought me joy every year yet the joy is not within reach this year.

I have decorated the outside of my cabin with big obnoxious multicolored lights. I have baked my traditional cookies and sweets. I have put up a live tree that smells wonderful and has soft pine needles. Mostly Riley ornaments hang from the branches of my Christmas tree. That is about all I have here. I brought with me part of the ornaments I had bought him each year since he was born. A tradition I had for the kids was that I bought an ornament for each one of them that represented their age, their likes and interests. My thinking was that they would have ornaments to take with them when they moved out and had a Christmas tree of their own. Riley’s ornaments will stay with us. He won’t be taking them and putting them on his tree some day like I had planned.

My Christmas tree sits by my fireplace burning warmly. My cabin smells like a camp fire. All of the new here doesn’t keep me from remembering the old. Oh how I miss my kids this year. I will hold two of them again. I wish to God that my boy was still here, alive, breathing, smiling, laughing and entertaining us with his ever present personality. I cry and I cry. I ache and I ache for him. Christmas will never be the same. My life will never be or feel the same.

I think of Riley’s smile as he opened presents. He was just as vibrant at age 17  on Christmas morning as he was when he was 7.  Always  thankful for his gifts even as he opened the boxes of clothes though you know he was anxious to get to the good stuff.

When he was young, he was the first to wake up. We would give him the go ahead to sort the presents and make our piles of gifts around the tree so that we could have a little more sleep. Then when he let us know that he was done, we would get up, wake up the teenagers and take our spots around the tree. Our tradition was to open presents youngest to oldest. Riley was the first to open a gift each year. He opened his last Christmas gift ever last year. We didn’t know. He didn’t know.

I wish Riley was opening a present from me this Christmas morning. I am glad that I cannot see his empty spot next to the tree. If only he could give us the gift of being here this year.

Just let it be over. Let the stabbing memories of this time of year pass. As the train passes, as I think the crossing bars will raise, another train comes going the other direction! That is where we are this year. Waiting for another Riley memory to pass with yet another one on its way. Though Riley memories give us smiles, the pain that there won’t be another moment in time created with him in it is the uncomfortable stabbing reality of now on. Riley’s choice to try acid on his 18th birthday ended his life and changed our lives, our holidays forever.

Riley, a graduating senior in high school, accepted to NAU,  band kid, choir kid, computer whiz, entertainer for anyone in his presence by guitar, jokes, smiles and hugs, a brother, a son won’t sit underneath another Christmas tree and open a present. If only kids would realize that messing with drugs of any kind is dangerous.

Do you really know what is in that joint, pill, tab? Do you know what it will do to you? That possible high, that idea of an experience cannot be worth the outcome of what might happen. It happened to Riley. It is not worth it.

 

I Love You, Riley.