I have more Christmas decorations than anyone I know. They probably fill as many as sixteen large, plastic storage containers and a small assortment of cardboard boxes which I store in my attic. Decorating my house has always taken two to four days, depending upon the number of interruptions, or how many times I got sidetracked cleaning ledges and shelves that usually do not get cleaned any other time of the year.

Over the years my collection of decorations has grown. People learned that I collected Santa Clauses, and an unusual Santa was a sure way to please me when folks had no idea what to give me for Christmas. Except for the Santa ornaments one can buy at every tourist attraction in the country, none of my Santas or other decorations are the tinselly, cheap kind. I just have way too many decorations to keep anything except the quality stuff, ornaments that have sentimental value, or the things that my children and I lovingly made by hand over the years. The latter two are exactly why I have not decorated for Christmas this year.

You see, my youngest son died this year. In those boxes of ornaments are at least a dozen that bear his name and sometimes the year that we bought or made the ornament. There are the ‘stained glass’ ornaments that Tod and his step-sister, Denee made one year, and the lace angels that they spent hours gluing together and painting. I have boxes of hand-beaded ornaments that look like replicas of Victorian satin balls. Each of the sequins and beads is individually attached with a silk pin, and some of these have several hundreds of sequins and beads attached. My oldest son never really had any interest in any of them, but my youngest son loved these ornaments and had names for some of them. Come to think of it, one year he made a smaller one, and whenever people admired the ornaments on the tree, he was proud to show his off. I can see it in my mind’s eye- a white satin ball covered with green and red sequins and beads.

I cannot bear to open boxes of ornaments and see his name across the front. I don’t want to miss him every time I see the ornaments that he himself made over the years. Even if I left those boxes untouched and used just the others, I would hear his names for these ornaments as I hung each one on the tree: “Carousel”, “Christmas Queen”, or “Ugly Step-sister” (for the one that didn’t come out quite as beautiful as the others).

I was in a store with a friend today. We were looking at ornaments and I started to cry because I thought about all of the beautiful ornaments that I couldn’t bear to look at this year. I always knew that when I died, Tod would lovingly hang my ornaments on his own tree every year. Michael? The best I can hope for is that he will give them away rather than trash them after I am gone.