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We always went to a tree farm and cut our Christmas tree down when Joe was here.

In 2007 my sister JoAnn went with Luke, Alyssa and I to get our tree. We picked it out of a lot.

In 2008 Joe's brother Jeff went with Luke, Alyssa and I to get our tree. We picked it out of a lot.

This year it was just the three of us and we picked it out of a lot. I felt like that was....bearable....realistic.....and just how it is. It is sad for me to do this stuff. The memories of years past are right at the front of my mind. The pictures of my kids running through the tree farms, picking out our trees, Joe cutting them down, the whole thing....they are all etched still so clearly in my mind. I knew then, while it was happening, that at these were perfect moments for our family. All happy, all working together, all perfect. Now, all gone.

I realize that the sadness of the tree tradition is not the same for Luke and Alyssa as it is for me. Obviously they were too small to remember going to get Christmas trees in a backpack as babies or even as toddlers and young kids. I think Luke might remember getting a tree with Joe, but probably not Alyssa (insert heart break). And of course they are not forward thinking in the way adults are. Joe and I were consciously building traditions for our family, the sadness of those traditions being stopped in their tracks is mine alone. I hate knowing that the days and years with my little children are slipping by and I won't get this time back....what if I look back and wish I kept a tradition going?

I can hear some of you saying "But you'll build new traditions". And we have. And "At least you have people who love you in your lives". And we all know we do. But at the same time I need to acknowledge what has been lost. As a wife, my entire present and future life was intertwined with Joe. I am trying to untangle that and make sense of it. I have had no choice but to figure out the present, as we live day to day. I have to be realistic and this blog is where I write the hard stuff that sits in my head. My actual life, the one that I live each day with my kids is not dreary and sad and miserable. We don't mope around. We don't dwell on the intensely sad stuff. When the three of us talk about stuff that we miss, we acknowledge that we feel sad about it, we take time feel that, and then we move on.
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2006

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2005

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Life will never be the same. What the future brings is unknown, but for certain, it will never be the same.