This month has been incredibly hard. I thought that by now the pain may have disappeared but this month has contained a lot of "firsts" & obviously there are still more to come.
The whole buying of an ornament to remember nana by came out of a flip comment made by one of the boys on about December 2nd. "I wish we had an advent calendar from nana to open." The sadness I felt was very deep & I was quickly in tears. Luckily I remembered that while clearing out mum's bedroom we did indeed find 2 advent calendars. I took one & Jo took the other. Even more lucky, given the state the garage & the house is in with boxes everywhere from both our house & mum's, is that I knew exactly where to find it.
So the boys do indeed have a last advent calendar from nana & they take turns everyday to open it. I must remember to take a photo of it.
Mum used to love Christmas & every year she would go "all out". She would get her christmas tree out & let the grandchildren have free reign in decorating it. She would have tinsel on stair banisters, a musical christmas tree that the kids loved hearing & a advent calendar of her own that the children would open with her.
We have always given the boys a christmas ornament, usually something based on their life at this stage. I am still looking for an ornament for the boys at the moment (but I am finding the whole christmas thing very, very hard) but when we were in Ballantynes getting James' photo with santa it seemed a great opportunity to maybe buy a decoration that they would want to remember nana by.
James chose this little cherub & at the moment it sits with all the angels "where nana is, mum."
