Holidays

I'm sitting on the corner of Reedie Drive and Georgia Avenue, watching the sky above Dunkin Donuts explode in bursts of color. 

Rich and I reckoned the fireworks display at Einstein High School, just under 1.5 miles away, should be visible from here, and opted to forego struggling through the patriotic throngs sure to converge on the school at the first glimmers of twilight, perhaps earlier.   Indeed, a crowd has been slowly growing, a few people at a time, in the Safeway parking lot next door.  Thriller, which has been blaring from one of the cars since about 6 PM, is on its fourth or fifth iteration.  Apparently, it is the only album these devout Michael Jackson fans own.

We are only slightly disappointed by the visibility – or, lack thereof.  We can make out most, or at least the crest, of each fulgurant bloom between two tall buildings and over a cluster of treetops.

Having always been enamored with any sort of pyrotechnics, Rich is able to forgive the various encroachments on the periphery of his view.  His fingers absent-mindedly trace circles between my shoulder blades as he enjoys the display.

I, on the other hand, have lost interest entirely.  It is far more entertaining to watch the crowd swarming excitedly around me.  I feel, and not for the first time, like the calm eye of a tumultuous storm – passive and sedentary amidst so much kinetic energy.

The young family at my right seem enthralled by what they can see of the fireworks.  The father, likely in his late 20s, hoisted his 3-year-old son up on to his shoulders just as the first sparks cut into the darkening sky.  The mother stands pressed to his side, her arm looped through his.  The boy, clearly delighted with his elevated vantage point, squeals with delight and claps his hands as each new rocket is launched, screaming, into the sky and explodes with a loud bang.

I remember that.  I remember waiting the whole day, eagerly anticipating nightfall, when my sisters and I would pile into the family station wagon and go to watch the fireworks.  It's that same thrill, that same exuberance, that I see on the boy's face.

It's that same thrill, that same exuberance, that I have long since lost.

The 4th of July was the first holiday after I was injured. Watching the fireworks that year was very important to me. Two thousand miles from friends and family, I longed for some sense of normality. I wanted desperately for something, anything, familiar to reassure me that the world was still there, just as I’d left it, and everything would be okay. Life went on; my life would go on.

Holidays were big at Craig Hospital; I wasn’t the only one who sought solace in the familiarity of tradition. It was less than a week since I’d arrived at the rehab hospital, and I was still very sick. On the 4th of July, the staff often took the patients who weren’t well enough to go on the fireworks outing up to the roof to watch the local fireworks display. That night, they put me into a high-back manual wheelchair, bundled me up under several hospital blankets, set my portable respirator on a shelf under the back of the chair, and took my parents and me up to the roof. Three different displays were firing off simultaneously, so we could see the brilliant explosions in any direction we turned.

It should have been thrilling – the rockets, streaking up through the air and erupting into glimmering dandelion puffs over the Rocky Mountains before fading into the inky sky, smoky billows carried away by a gently stirring breeze. Indeed, it was the most elaborate fireworks display I had ever seen. Yet I felt oddly, inexplicably, detached.

Meh.

Whatever.

I tried to conjure some semblance of excitement for my parents, who needed some reassuring of their own at the time. I made as if I were having fun, though I was entirely underwhelmed.

For years, I’ve attributed my reaction, on that first post-injury holiday, to a combination of shock and medication. I did, after all, spend the first few months after the accident in a stunned haze of confusion.

As I watch the delight of this young boy, the excitement of his parents, and the fervor permeating the crowd around us, I realize that that was not the case at all. Though shock and medication were no doubt contributing factors to my lackluster reaction, they did not account for all the holidays since.

People who have depression are known to have great difficulty with holidays. I’ve heard this difficulty attributed to loneliness, stress, anxiety, and other rather vague causes. What I now realize is that depression becomes more acute on holidays because the thrill is gone. Everything that made the holiday special is gone. Anticipation? Gone. Excitement? Gone. Enjoyment? Gone. What is there, what has taken the place of all these happy holiday experiences, is the knowledge of what was once there and the stark contrast of its absence.