About Christmas/ essay

Today I’m eating a Fish sandwich, French Fries and a Diet Coke from McDonalds. It’s food I try hard not to eat. I've eaten it enough to tell you, today,  the fries sat too long in the heat. The fish sandwich was fresh with always too much tartar sauce! The diet Coke was awful; tinny and watery and just bad. I waited in a long line at 2pm in the afternoon to get that food. I ate in my car. I did it because these days I follow random thoughts and wishes especially when they lead to me eating my son’s favorite foods. Although he wasn’t a fish sandwich guy. He was a big French Fries guy. 

My son died last July of an accidental overdose of Fentanyl. He was a smart, kind man who could make people laugh. People loved him. Some of them were with him when he died on the floor of the L.A. sober house. It was a slip, they call it. He had been working at being sober a lot the last few years. He used, came back, told the house supervisor and went up to change clothes to go to a meeting. And collapsed. They tried to revive him but it was too much and too late.  Today I was thinking about how I feel his presence around me. I listen to these random thoughts. He would think it pretty funny that his mom was eating McDonald’s considering how much I used to criticize fast food. I imagine him laughing at me up in heaven. 

As I was eating, I was thinking about the gifts I had to buy. How it's tempting to buy what I’d like to get for the people on my list for Christmas. Or at least, what I can approve of giving. A gift that reflects my values, my budget,  er...me.  Now, with the perspective of this impossible grief, I’m thinking, give them what they want. Give them exactly what they want.  Gifts are for them, right? 

I’m thinking about how good it can feel to get exactly, exactly, what you want. It's a powerful feeling. A feeling, possibly, of being loved, or of being understood. And as a therapist, I can tell you, there are a lot of people out there who don’t ever give themselves exactly what they want.  And people who never get as a gift exactly what they want. For lots of good reasons. Still it seems to me, exactly what they want is, well, a real gift.