Misremembered Christmas Memories
By: Danielle Dahl
Tags: Trauma, Family, Holidays, Relationships, Childhood

Misremembered Christmas Memories

Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash

My childhood Christmases look picture perfect when you flip through the albums. However, my mother rarely surfaced on Christmas Day. We always had something under the tree “from her” and an excuse why she wasn’t there. All I ever really wanted for Christmas was a pony and my mother.

My mom was in prison when I was in 8th grade but was released by Christmas. My grandparents hid her under a sheet in the living room. I thought was it was a horse because I saw the sheet move. I remember simultaneously feeling disappointment and joy.

Trauma is tricky; my timeline is not always right. According to the author of The Body Keeps The Score, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk:

“The imprints of traumatic experiences are organized not as coherent, logical narratives but in fragmented sensory and emotional traces: images, sounds, and physical sensations.”

Certain memories are fuzzy.

The ghost of Christmases Past

I recall moments of happiness from the Christmases before that one with my mom. My grandma meticulously placed our gifts under the tree (which she decorated). My sister and I tore open our perfectly wrapped presents. The tree sat in the pristine second living room, complete with vacuum lines on the light carpet. She barred us from the room during the other 364 days of the year. If she saw footprints, we were punished.

That Christmas, however, ended in a fight between my grandmother and my mother. It was also the time (I think) that she explained that she would enter the witness protection program. We couldn’t go with her — yet another heartbreaking, perfect Christmas.

Christmas Visitors From Another Country

A year later, my grandma had all her family coming from Belgium. It had been years since she’d seen them. We scrubbed the immaculate house to prepare for them. My grandma’s anxiety manifested itself the way it always did, in anger and dissatisfaction.

Eight people showed up, none of whom spoke English, and only my grandmother spoke French. Two of these people were teenage girls, close in age to my sister and me. Onde day, we were playing in the pool, and the girls kept shooing us away, saying, “Laisse-moi tranquille!”

I didn’t know this phrase, so I asked my grandma. She told me, “It means leave me alone.” That Christmas Day, the building tension between us four girls blew like the lid of a pressure cooker. I forget what offense started it, but I went looking for my grandma.

She yelled about how I was ruining their vacation. She ranted about my lack of gratitude for things like a Disney trip during the holidays. I remember crying and saying something about how mean they were being. I don’t recall the exchanged words, but something I said hit a nerve. She hit me repeatedly, slapping me so hard I fell into the corner of the dresser, cutting my eye.

She stormed away and told me to stay in my room until it was time to open presents. Later, I smiled through the physical and emotional pain for the camera. I expressed gratitude for all the gifts I received. I thought it would be the worst Christmas I’d live through.

Hope for the holidays

Years later, in the summer of 2001, my grandmother took us to see my mother. My grandma knew where she was, even though she wasn’t supposed to. After this emotional visit, I chose not to return to Florida, starting the local college equestrian program. That year I shared the only Thanksgiving I remember with my mother and eagerly awaited Christmas. Since I had my mother and a horse of my own, I thought it would be perfect.

I can relive every detail about that Christmas.

My mother drove her work van off the side of the road on a lonely highway on December 3rd, 2001. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt, and the van ended up rolling over her multiple times, severing the major arteries in her waist. She died alone.

We had two funerals for her — one here in Montana. I went to hold her hand and heard a crinkling sound. Thinking there was something in her pocket, I stuck my hand in there. The mortician asked me what was wrong. I said, “There is something in her pocket.”

He looked at me sadly and replied, “No, it crushed her body. We had to stuff her abdomen so her clothes would fit properly.”

I’ve tried, but can’t forget those words.

The next funeral in Florida led to a massive fight between my grandma and me. I got into a fistfight with my sister and flew home in a daze.

A few days before Christmas, I was in my mom’s closet, trying to find something with her scent. Instead, I found her stash of Christmas gifts. She had bought me an enormous stuffed horse.

I am thankful for my misremembered Christmas memories as they are all I have left. Today’s Christmases are much merrier. Like many children who experienced trauma in their youth, I was determined to have a different future. I had some control issues with how I decorated the tree. We don’t speak about gingerbread houses in my home… they are the devil to us ‘Type A’ people. Therapy helped me through a lot of that.

We bake cookies. We unwrap Christmas jammies on Christmas Eve and have hot cocoa while watching a movie. Nothing is perfect, but I hope I’ve left my children with fond memories that they can recall without the haze trauma leaves on the brain.