A Bad Christmas

 Oh No, She Didn't!!!


I just want to get this out there so people know that you aren’t alone in grieving during the holidays.

My dad did what was best for him when he and my mom got divorced. I am trying to see from his perspective and not blame him for protecting himself and his feelings, but what he did really hurt me. My parents divorced; my mom moved with my oldest brother, Luke, into another apartment in town; my dad started dating someone else he used to work with; my mom and brother were in a car accident and my mother died on impact; and at one of the holiday parties we were begging, BEGGING my dad for us to have a year to grieve. For it to just be the Webbs without adding anyone else to the family. He didn’t respect our wishes.

Our family tradition was to go to a family friends’ place for a Christmas Eve party and then beg my parents to open one present before we went to bed that night. It went from a strict “no” over the years to some years they would relent to some years they wouldn’t. Then we would wake up whenever the parents wanted to without setting an alarm, and they would basically lock their door so as not to be disturbed by the kids wanting their presents. Once they were up, we read the Christmas story from at least one of the gospels. Sometimes we used the chronological Bible to literally get in every single verse of the Christmas story in order from all the gospels. We had breakfast, and then we tore through our presents! We weren’t a very…drawn together family, so after presents were opened, we usually went to our rooms to play with our new toys. That’s how we spent the rest of Christmas.

This year that’s how we expected to spend Christmas. Low and behold, we had an extra guest! After the Bible story and the opening of presents, we got a knock at the door, and who showed up but the person nobody in the house except my dad wanted to see…his girlfriend. But she brought a shiny new gift and a whole new dynamic to the family…kind of. See, we specifically had told our dad that we didn’t want his girlfriend around during this Christmas because our mom had died the September before that, and we wanted a couple holidays to ourselves. He didn’t listen to us, and that felt like betrayal to me. So in walks the girlfriend with a fancy new gift that he couldn’t have afforded on his own: a GameCube. Gamers laugh and scoff, but I really wanted to play Super Smash Bros, and my friend had an N64, and I wanted to play the next level up, so of course I wanted the GameCube! My two older brothers were also avid gamers, so this turned into a sort of family Christmas day plus her. I still think of it as a blackmailing present to get her into our lives.

To be fair, we did not make it easy for her. To be fair to us, she crashed the most major holiday months after our mother passed away. And the kicker was that they got engaged midnight that year/New Year’s and married the next October, because that was the one compromise she was willing to listen to. Our mom was allowed to be in the grave a year before they got married.

If you’re going through a tough Christmas, I know some of how you’re feeling. I love you, and hope you can find some love for yourself this Christmas! Cutting out people you love who are toxic to you, and putting up boundaries can be hard, but I know you can do it!

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