I just cut my Christmas tree down with a jigsaw in my living room. In pieces.
It sat there for months, fully decorated, long after the holiday ended. Not because I didn’t care, but because I couldn’t bring myself to move it. I wasn’t ready. Taking it down meant admitting that time had moved forward, that my brother was really gone. I had been frozen in that moment—six days before Christmas—when everything changed. And I wasn’t ready to step past it.
But now, it’s done. Not gently, not ceremoniously. Just me, standing here in the aftermath, staring at the pieces on the floor, overwhelmed with shame and frustration. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of rolling a dried-out Christmas tree to the curb in April. Because I was humiliated that I had let it sit there for so long. Because I hated that this was my reality.
Grief does strange things to time. It slows it down, speeds it up, warps reality so that some things seem frozen in place while everything else keeps moving. I’m not prioritizing the things that make a house look 'normal.' The tree, the laundry, the grass in the yard—none of it matters. I am focusing on what I have the energy for: making sure my son was okay, making sure my mother isn't drowning in her own grief, making sure I don't slip back into old patterns just because my world had been turned upside down.
This isn’t about strength. I’m not some symbol of resilience. I’m not doing everything right. I’m just here, trying to function in the simplest way possible. I eat what I need to eat. I move when I can. I keep going because that’s all I know how to do. Clearly, I just cut my Christmas tree down, in April to throw it away in black bags so I don't have to suffer the shame and embarrassment.
Losing my brother made every part of this harder. I was still adjusting to my body, still figuring out what I could eat, still trying to reconcile the version of myself I had always known with the one I was becoming. And on top of that, I was navigating a grief so heavy it made even the smallest tasks feel impossible.
I’m not falling apart, but I’m not okay, either. And I don’t know how to reconcile that.
It wasn’t just about the tree. It was about the fact that I couldn’t stay in that moment any longer. That, whether I liked it or not, time had moved forward. That no matter how much I wanted to freeze everything and hold onto the last memories of him, life wasn’t going to let me.
So I took a saw and cut it down. Because I couldn’t let it stand there anymore. Because I had to accept, in that moment, that I was still here. That I have to keep going, even though I feel completely drained. Even if I wasn’t ready.
I don’t have a neat conclusion for this. No lesson. No message of strength. Just this moment, where I am, trying to exist in the space between what was and what is.
If you’ve ever been here—if you’ve ever had something sit in your home for months because moving it would mean accepting a reality you weren’t ready for—I see you. I don’t have advice. But I see you.
