The holidays are hard. Yes, still.

“The holidays” started in October for us when we had to start thinking about how we would deal with Halloween and the subsequent holiday season.

A year after Marley died, we tried to “reclaim” Halloween. It was early October, and Monique was pregnant with Maya and Zion. We were just coming out of the deep grief from Marley’s death and finally feeling hopeful as the new pregnancy was going really well.

We planned to send out Halloween-themed packages filled with candy and snacks to our nieces, nephews, and friends. Everything was bought, and packages were made and ready to be mailed. But it had been a snowy October, and being pregnant (and it being a pandemic), it took us a while to get to the post office. In the end, we never made it there.

On October 30th, we went in for a routine scan and discovered that Maya was dead. That took all of the wind out of our sails for Halloween. We waited until dark that night, so the neighbors wouldn’t see us or ask us why we were removing our Halloween decorations a day before Halloween. We kept the lights off on Halloween and didn’t give out any candy or celebrate. The care packages we were going to send sat in our house, getting stale until we finally put them in the trash months later.Grieving Maya was difficult, especially as Monique was still pregnant with Zion. It was a double-edged sword of being immensely sad while trying to remain hopeful. November was a tough month for us, and then in early December, we found out that Zion was at risk. We tried desperately to be optimistic, but on December 21st, we learned we had lost him too. We would spend Christmas that year getting surgery at the hospital and trying to recover physically and emotionally.

Losing Maya and Zion right around Halloween and Christmas made an already difficult holiday season even more challenging. Families who have lost a baby at any time of year find the holidays extremely difficult. The “most wonderful time of the year” is filled with reminders of memories that you won’t make, celebrations you won’t have, and gifts you won’t buy. For us, the holidays sting a little extra because of the losses that occurred around these dates.

This year is the first year since 2019 that Monique is not pregnant in December. It feels different to enter the holiday season without the fear that comes with pregnancy or the trauma that comes with new grief. P’s birth hasn’t erased all of the memories, sadness, and trauma we’ve experienced.

One of our grief groups calls it “Living in the land of AND…”. Being grateful that we have P AND aching for the three children lost. Celebrating AND mourning. This year, the holidays come with joy AND sorrow. How we will honor our lost children this season while we create new memories with P remains to be seen.

So if we don’t engage in the holiday season with the usual vigor, or joy that we may have had in previous years – we hope you can understand why. As P gets older and understands more about the holiday season, these months will likely look different but for now we’re living in the “Land of And.”