I do not think anything could be stranger for me than the holidays this year. Husband Paul’s death in August meant certain death of a merry holiday in the Cooper house.

Although, I did string lights across the front windows and around the wreath outside the front door.

I also put out the five-inch wooden Santa Claus we have had for years.

I thought this Santa was adorable when I selected him from among others.

This Santa is on his knees, his bare feet behind him. He is holding the laces of his boots which are resting on the floor in front of him.

Paul was puzzled when I brought this Santa home years ago. After all, Santa did not seem very cheerful, much less have anything to bring down the chimney.

Yes, humble Santa is begging. Perhaps, he is asking the greater Santa for socks.

Still, he is adorable, just not the ordinary Santa.

Nor would my Christmas be an ordinary Christmas.

Christmases past

Two of my husband’s children were adults and one near adult when we married, so technically, I was a stepmother but only for a brief time. A few years later, our home became central to holiday celebrations.

When grandchildren arrived, holidays took on the fun of young children slashing through presents and sitting at our table for Christmas dinner. I have many fond memories of those days.

As lives changed, including moves to various locations, our holidays became no more than an obligatory visit to grandparents during the holidays. Although Paul was entering the stage of preferring less hectic holiday visits and I was not far behind him, we cherished the visits.

Now, the family has traveled back to their busy lives and own holiday traditions after being present for the death and celebration of life of their father. There will be no Paul to visit in Sequim this year.

Christmas present

I am surprisingly sanguine about the prospect of the holiday alone, possibly lonely. I cannot imagine celebrating. I am still numb part of the time and when not numb, I am sad.

I can imagine marking the holidays with simple joys, some that remember and some that bring simple pleasure.

I will share one such pleasure that occurred late one afternoon and involved the two Cooper cats, Maggie and Jolie, in such a clever way that I imagined they plotted it the night before.

Maggie and Jolie have been in our family for 10 years. We picked them out of a lineup of cats thinking they looked the most innocent. They were about 2-years-old. We learned later they had a bit of a checkered history having been returned twice to the shelter.

But then, so did Paul and I have history.

Maggie and Jolie have done their share of grieving over losing Paul, especially Jolie who “owned” Paul from the first day. Like me, they lost weight in the two months following Paul’s death.

I have done my best to lavish more love on them especially with drive-by-petting when in their favorite chair.

But they surprised me when that late afternoon, they included me in the cat version of a group hug.

(Those who follow my Facebook will recognize the following must-share cute cat story).

It was near dusk on yet another cloudy, gloomy Sequim winter day.

I was sitting in silence in the space Paul spent daylight hours for much of the last two years of his life. It was my moment with Paul.

Soon I was joined by Jolie who nestled in my lap as she had done so often in Paul’s. Then, we were joined by Maggie who leaped to the top of the back rest of the chair to be as close as she could to me.

Soon, they were both purring as I petted them, one hand over my head on Maggie and the other on Jolie on my lap. Cats purring in stereo is as magical as the moment was for the three of us in our group hug of love for Paul.

Christmas future

Christmas future is not showing itself at least not to me.

It is grief again having its way.

We who grieve great loss must go through the most painful, sometimes powerful realizations until we have our love securely wrapped around our loved one, fastened in a permanent place in our heart.

Then, we can see the future, our life from then on.

What I do know is — I will be in this house in Sequim with Maggie and Jolie if our health holds. I will have supportive friends along with many new friends who have grieved with me as they grieved their own loss.

I have had and have the privilege of hearing the very personal and heartfelt stories of others who write to me.

I cannot call us a sisterhood because we are men and women.

We are a collaborative whose members communicate without words, whose eyes are always brimming, who delve down into the pain where we touch upon the deepest knowing only seen by those who know or have known the deepest loss.

I am indeed a fortunate woman to have known and felt great love and now to be touched so often with the compassion of humanity every day.

Out of ordinary unencumbered by fear, hate, anger, despair, and greed, we know our common humanity. There lives love and compassion, our most renewable resources.

Happy holidays readers!

Bertha Cooper, an award-winning featured columnist with the Sequim Gazette spent her career years in health care and is the author of the award-winning “Women, We’re Only Old Once.” Cooper and her husband lived in Sequim for 26 years. Now widowed, Cooper continues to live in the area she has grown to love. Reach her at columnists@sequimgazette.com.