Bittersweet

I don't like dark chocolate. It's bittersweet...like it cannot make a decision about being sweet and delicious or bitter and startling. It's frustrating. Something bittersweet cannot be sweet.

This Christmas, I find that my heart is in a bitter, bittersweet place. I cannot seem to find a comfortable place between the bitter and the sweet. I bounce unpredictably between the two with no clear place to land.

We found out a week ago that our local district is moving from half-day kindergarten as the standard to full day kindergarten as the standard. This means that, come fall, the Twincesses will join their brother at school all day long...leaving my employers with no need for a full time nanny. We are all sad at the prospect. We knew the day was coming, we just didn't know we'd be forced to it. Without much warning, this Christmas has become our last Christmas together.

There is sweetness to it, to be sure. Watching the children delight in the season certainly brightens the gloomiest of days. This year they've taken to heart the idea that giving is as much fun as receiving. They are forever making cards for people they love and taking into consideration what those people would like to see on a card. Their heartfelt efforts and capacity to love so freely is humbling, awe inspiring even.

I watch them respond to the impulses of their hearts and I am overcome with pride in their sweetness...and as quickly as that swells up in my heart, I am equally overcome with sadness that, in a matter of months, I will no longer be with them to witness their compassion and generosity.

I wrapped their gifts and I was torn between tears and excitement, thinking of how excited they are going to be with their bounty (and bounty it is...it took two full rolls of wrapping paper to wrap everything up!). I know that next year, I'll be wrapping gifts for different children. After 5 Christmases of wrapping gifts for my trio, that's going to be a tough adjustment.

Bittersweet.

It isn't just at work that my holiday is bittersweet this year.

Overshadowing everything is a grief that is still raw, ever present, and...at times...crippling. Just when I think it is easing, it sneaks up on me and leaves me grasping for breath.

There is one more child I want to be buying gifts for. I want his parents to be able to bring him to see Santa and whisper into Santa's ear what he really wants this year. I want his family to be wrapping his gifts, anticipating his excitement. I want them to sit at their holiday table and not have an empty chair. I want them to be able to light off Christmas Eve fireworks in their yard, not at their little boy's grave.

I want all of us who loved Ryan to not have this aching, gaping hole in our hearts.

Every Christmas, my favorite cards are the ones with pictures. I especially treasure the photos of children I've previously nannied...to still see them growing and becoming. I save them all. I come home every day eager to open the mail and to pull sweet smiling faces from the envelopes.

There's one I'll never get again, and every time I open an envelope my excitement battles the grief.


In all the sadness, I am deeply angry. I don't know where to direct that anger. No person did anything wrong. I'd be angry with God (if I'm completely honest, my heart is so) but my head knows that God is not the author of death...He does not cause our suffering or want us to be traumatized. He simply holds us through it, even if I can't feel one whit of that right now.

Sadness + anger = bitter, doesn't it?

There isn't much sweet about that.

I know that in time I will find that place of balance, a place where the grief isn't so blinding and where I can give the sweetness of my experiences the full focus. I will find a place where the bitter doesn't distort the sweetness, but makes the sweetness all that more sweet and precious.

I just wish I had a map of how to get there.