Silent Night

Yesterday Tim and I went to town and got our Christmas tree, ornaments and decorations out of storage. I at least wanted to attempt to decorate. I know I can't run and hide from these things forever. I need to face the memories that seeing the ornaments will dredge up. We decorated it together and I did the rest of the decorations and hung the stockings. I had found some mini owl ornaments at Walmart and bought them. I wrote 2014 on them and also remembered that we had bought an ornament in memory of Amanda when we were in Greenville for her service. We couldn't remember what the ornament was...it was just sort of a flash of us buying one as that was all such a blur, but I went into my bottom dresser drawer and found it as well as the angel ornament that my friend, Martha, had painted for me. We got it all out together without too many tears. There were some, of course, as we remembered certain memories attached to different ornaments and, of course, her putting the angel on the tree. We put a big red bow on the top and hung one of the mini owls from the bow to symbolize Amanda having always done the topper. We lost it a little bit afterwards. We just miss her so much. 

Later on I was straightening up and realized I hadn't seen Tim in a little while. I saw the light out in our room so thought he might be laying down, and he was , but he'd plugged in one of the digital picture frames and was looking at all of those pictures and crying. I laid down next to him and watched them, laughing at some but just holding his hand. We plugged in the other one and looked at those, too.

I guess because we had been listening to Christmas caroles and decorating the tree that in my sleep I wrote a poem about silent night, but of a different kind, about how loud silence can be, the absence of someone is so present. I should have written it down when I woke up but didn't; however, the basic idea of it wouldn't leave me alone. So this is for my Amanda:

SILENT NIGHT

It's another silent night
Wish you were here so I could hold you tight
Life goes on, but it doesn't feel right
Looks like another silent night.

I never knew silence could be so loud
I'm still marching on trying to make you proud
I strain to hear your voice, but I don't hear a sound
It's just another silent night.

Some days are worse than others and I'm crying in my bed
With memories and regrets playing in my head
In my dreams I hold you close, loving words we have said
Only to awaken from another silent night.

It's almost been a year since I held your hand
The weight of your loss makes it hard for me to stand
But my hope is in the One, and I'll see you again
After a few more silent nights.