“You’ve lost a lot,” Bailey said, empathizing with herlosses. One minute she’d been planning a wedding, and in the next she was in mourning—for everything that now wouldn’t come to pass.
“So much,” Regina murmured, nodding. “And being blindsided by someone you love is the worst.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Gemma said, shaking her head. They had all had various disappointments in relationships, yet none had been this brutal.
“And I know none of you liked Kai, so you’re probably rejoicing,” Lynn said, her voice heated as she looked around the table, glaring at her sisters.
Immediately there was a chorus of denials from the group. Bailey couldn’t muster up the energy to deny it. What was the point? Everyone knew she’d thought Kai was a mean-spirited jerk who didn’t deserve Lynn. It was best to keep her mouth shut.
“Lynn, I know you’re hurting, but it’s best if you don’t let it consume you,” her mother said. Cheryl leaned over and patted Lynn on the shoulder. Her sister sniffled before sitting up ramrod straight in her chair. She was doing her best to put on a brave front. Come to think about it, that was what she and her sisters had always been encouraged to do.
Bailey didn’t agree with her mother’s suck-it-up philosophy. Just once she wanted to hear Lynn scream at the top of her lungs, to cry out instead of stifling her emotions. Wasn’t that the healthy thing to do? Her family was dysfunctional. They all loved one another, but in moments of crisis they tended to either fall apart or freeze up. Their coping skills had been stunted around the time of her father’s death.
They continued to wrap up the gingerbread, placing cheery little notes in the plastic bags. A memory arose thatcaused her eyes to get misty. It was building up inside her to such a degree that she needed to share it with her family.
“Do you guys remember that Christmas when Dad ate so much gingerbread that he got sick?” she asked. “And then swore he’d never eat another morsel of gingerbread ever again, but we caught him eating some from the cookie jar?”
She let out a little giggle. Her sisters were smiling as well, as if they each remembered the incident.
A wistful smile hovered around her mother’s lips. “Yet he never lost his love for gingerbread. If he were here now, he would—” Her mother’s voice broke, and she stopped talking mid-sentence. She quickly dabbed at her eyes.
Immediately all her sisters swarmed around their mother, wrapping their arms around her and whispering words of comfort.
Bailey clenched her teeth to stop herself from screaming. She knew that her mother’s feelings were genuine, but her being upset caused the discussion about her father to come to a grinding halt. It happened every single time. She couldn’t figure out why every sign of emotion needed to be extinguished. Yet now she was the bad guy, feeling guilty and desperately needing to fix things.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have brought Dad up,” Bailey apologized. Even though she knew that she hadn’t done anything wrong, it was best to try to smooth things over. As it was, Bailey was certain her sisters would blame her for upsetting their mother. This was the way her family worked. She should be used to it by now, but it still hurt.
“It’s okay, Bailey,” Cheryl said, squeezing her hand. “After all these years it’s still so painful to talk about him.”
“We get it,” Regina said, wiping away a few stray tears. “I think we all feel that way.”
Only, Bailey didn’t. She was the outlier in her family. They were all just walking around like zombies, avoiding the reality of what had happened to them. And the worst part of all was that her father’s memory had been diluted, as if even talking about him was more than they could bear. And it was all being done to avoid pain at all costs. Bailey needed to talk about him, because with each year that passed, she felt as if she was forgetting all the wonderful little nuances that had made her dad special. And her family were the only people who had truly known him the way she had, yet they acted as if their memories needed to be packed away.
“I don’t think happy memories should necessarily make us sad,” Bailey said. “Isn’t it holding us back by pushing all the memories away? Can you imagine if we actually—”
“Let’s talk about something else,” Gemma said, cutting her off. “I decided to make my special lasagna dish for our holiday potluck.”
A chorus of cheers went up.Of course, Bailey thought. Any diversion from reality was always celebrated.
“Yummy,” Lynn said. “Nothing better these days than comfort food.”
Her sister’s lasagna was legendary. Bailey’s stomach was grumbling at the mere mention of it, even though she didn’t appreciate her sister steering the attention away from her comment. They all worked overtime to deflect.
And this was one of the problems that she believed was at the root of her issues with the holidays. Her family never talked about the loss of her father or the tragic event that hadshaped their lives. It was like they were all trying to bury it so that they didn’t have to feel the hurt associated with losing him, but the problem was that doing so never solved anything. And she would bet her last dollar that they were all still suffering and dealing with grief they’d never processed.
The pain Lynn was going through now was something she was fighting against. Bailey had a feeling that this loss reminded her of the huge void her father’s death had left in all their lives. She never understood why her sister had put up with her fiancé. He’d always been dismissive and narcissistic. She’d never sensed that Lynn had truly been happy with him. Moreover, she had the feeling that her sister had just settled, perhaps at a fear of being alone. They had all seen their mother struggle as a widow. They’d all sensed her loneliness, with none of them wanting to end up like her. Alone. And as much as Lynn’s situation was messed up, Bailey knew that she wasn’t the only one in her family who was struggling. They all were, in some form or another. After all these years, she was still angry: angry at Christmas, angry at the drunk driver who had taken her father’s life, angry at the fact that no one in her family wanted to talk about it.
If she had one wish for this holiday season, it would be to get to the heart of her family’s avoidance so that they could honor her father in a meaningful way. And maybe, just maybe, she could start to believe in Christmas again.
