Future

In counseling today we talk of the future. My future. Without Colby. We specifically discuss holidays, celebrations, and traditions, which will soon be spent by myself. While my mom's health is okay, she is in her middle eighties. Statistics and reality indicate she will not be here forever.

I think ahead to Christmas celebrations spent alone and realize in my future holidays, there will not be much to celebrate. The traditions of our family in all honesty will die with my mother, for I will not bother to go through them just for me. And, there will be no one left to remember the joy on Colby's face the Christmas morning when he was three, or the time Colby pulled "Fred Cat" out of the tree and saved it from tipping over. There will be no one left who cares.

My job now is to decide how I want to spend these future days of celebration. I can't change reality. I can't change the fact that I have no immediate family, that there are no future generations in my future. But there are options. Many of them. Too many. My counselor and I decide I need to figure out what I don't want to do, before I can get what I want to do. What I feel I can do, will be able to do.

The first decision concerns the coming holiday season. 2009. I will be with my Mom in Minnesota. Our recent holidays centered around Colby. Will we celebrate exactly as before, just without Colby? Or, will we eliminate traditions, the Christmas Eve stockings, the big holiday dinner? It is early to be thinking of these things, but in my new state of needing order, needing plans I can follow, making a decisions about this will help me move on. My counselor suggests being flexible in whatever decisions are made. "Go with the emotional flow," are her actual words. Sounds good to me. I know that whatever we decide, Colby would want us to do whatever was easy, whatever makes us happy. My mom and I have some thinking to do and I am anxious to see what we decide.