After a very long absence from the world of blogging, I am going to try for a resurgence.  It isn’t that I don’t think about blogging, or that I don’t have pictures and stories to publish; It is simply that time gets away from me and, more importantly, it still feels wrong to publish a blog posting that my mom will never read.  I am still struggling to adapt to the world without my momma in it and the approaching holidays are making it both more complex and helping to steer me back in the direction of living at the same time.  It is an odd thing trying to process grief.  On one hand, I yearn for the world to stop.  I don’t understand how stores have displays about stocking stuffers when my mom won’t have a stocking to sift through.  I am confused how people are making Thanksgiving plans to celebrate and eat with family when our family has forever changed.  How is Santa arriving in stores and malls across the world when Mom and I won’t be able to laugh as we take our adult selves to sit on the lap of the big man in red and smile for a photo?  As troubling as it is to contemplate the holiday season without her, it is equally as troubling to think about turning my back on the holiday cheer that I have grown up surrounded by.  My mom LOVED the holidays.  She festively decorated for each upcoming holiday, no matter how big or small…. Acorns and leaves adorned the table as soon as the calendar turned to September to let everyone know it was fall, snowmen and lights took over the house the day after Thanksgiving, candy hearts in a centerpiece dish for Valentine’s Day, and so much more.  Her favorite of all holidays was Christmas.  She loved shopping for others and finding the perfect gifts.  She was able to do this, in no small part, because she did her Christmas shopping year round.  She kept running lists of ideas for her family members, shopped for bargains, and was genuinely excited each and every time she found that PERFECT gift for someone she loved.  She loved setting up the tree with all of the homemade decorations and to this day, she has each of our wreaths made out of packing peanuts and painted in green that we made our Kindergarten year.  Mine was made in 1986, Aaron’s in 1989, and Ryan’s in 1984.  To say they look as good as the day we made them is a full fledged lie…. To say that Mom would have ever considered throwing them away is also a full fledged lie.  Each homemade ornament was precious to her.  Each told a story, held a memory, and made her smile.  Each year, as she would delicately pull such goodies out of her ornament tub and unwrap from their surrounding tissue paper, she would smile….. And us kids would mock her about how it was probably past the time in which she should have thrown it away 🙂  She wouldn’t hear of it, and would just smiled as she said (in her voice that I can hear as if she is saying it to me right now), “I can’t throw this away!  You/ Ryan/ Aaron made this in ____ grade and when you gave it to me _____, and you were so proud about _____.”  She had a story for each of them and a reason why EACH was the MOST special.  It is with this same gusto that I must wipe away my tears, smile through my sadness, and pull out my Christmas village….. The one that I always remember setting up with mom when I was younger.  It is with this same gusto that I must decorate a tree with personalized ornaments and bright lights and tinsel…. Just as I helped mom do every year on the day after Thanksgiving.  It is with this same gusto that I must put together lists and try to find that perfect gift for each of my family members… For the first time unable to brainstorm ideas with her and call her from the store aisles to have her help me make decisions.  It is with this same gusto that I must pass on the traditions, the excitement, the feelings, and the love of family that I still feel to this day when November rolls around…. The ones that are embedded in my heart forever because of her loving example and her willingness to share her love of the holidays with me.

I ran across this picture last weekend and it was a reminder that the holidays must go on.  For the Gott family, our 2006 ended with mom being diagnosed with her third cancer battle.  She was taking intense chemo, on a short break home from the hospital, and (although she didn’t know it at the time) was only days away from losing all of her hair at the time of this picture.  Despite it all, she found a smaller tree to decorate, busted out a portion of her regular ornaments, and scrounged up the energy to go gift shopping on a smaller scale than her normal over-to-the-top abilities.  We celebrated as a family, with not quite as many sides as usual but just as much love and gratefulness as always, if not more.  It would end up being my mom’s last Christmas with her mom…. Her own inspiration for holiday cheer and a strong sense of family togetherness.  I love this picture.

As everyone prepares for the holiday season in whatever capacity you do, I hope that you all take a second to reflect on your own traditions, your own memories, and your families.  Happy Holiday season to all of you…. And I’ll try not to be such a stranger to the blog world in the future!  Stay tuned as my goal of the day is to play catch up and bring you all up to speed on our Fall happenings!