Through the Solstice Door

Holiday Pressure Cooker

If my mother could weaponize guilt and bottle it, she’d put Big Pharma out of business.

“Are you coming Christmas Eve?” her text read when I rolled over and checked my phone. No “good morning,” no easing into it. Just straight for the jugular at 7:02 a.m.

Below it, from ten minutes later:

You didn’t answer. Are you still sleeping? Call me when you see this, honey. Love you.

I stared at the screen, hair in my eyes, mouth dry, that familiar weight pressing on my chest. I’d slept like crap. Again. No surprise. My brain liked to play the Greatest Hits of Trauma at three in the morning.

I typed back:

Morning. On my way to work. Will call later.

That bought me, what, eight hours? Ten, if I pretended my battery died. Again.

I swung my legs out of bed and stood up, joints popping like microwave popcorn. The box of ornaments sat in the corner, watching. I ignored it the way you ignore the scale in your bathroom.

Work. I could do work. Work was safe. Spreadsheets didn’t ask if you were “moving on.”

My office building tried really hard to be festive. Someone had hung a wreath on the glass front doors and plugged in a fake tree in the lobby. The tree flashed between red and green like it was trying to induce seizures.

I hated it on sight.

“Morning, Timber!” Our receptionist waved as I walked through, juggling my coffee, bag, and the emotional weight of ten Decembers.

“Hey, Amanda.” I forced a smile. “Tree looks… very bright.”

“Isn’t it cute?” she beamed. “I love Christmas. We’re doing Secret Santa later, did you see the email?”

I had. I’d deleted it.

“Yeah. Fun.” I lifted my coffee in a little salute and escaped down the hallway before she could ask who I’d drawn, because the answer would be “no one” and then we’d have to do the whole “it’s anonymous but mandatory” dance.

I pushed through the door to the admin office and breathed easier. Fluorescent lighting, humming computers, the faint smell of burnt coffee. The holy trinity.

My desk sat in the middle—organizational chaos disguised as order. Files in stacks. Sticky notes everywhere. A calendar pinned to the wall behind my monitor, dates filled in with different colored pens. If someone looked at it without context, they’d think I had a thriving social life. Jokes on them: those colors were for deadlines, meetings, vendor calls. The only “party” on there was my nephew’s birthday in February.

I dropped into my chair, took a sip of coffee, and booted up my computer. While it whirred awake, I checked my phone again.

Two more texts.

MOM:

We’re planning dinner for six on Christmas Eve. Your sister is making ham. Your dad wants to do a toast for him this year. It would mean a lot if you came.

And then, because she couldn’t help herself:

You know he wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone, sweetheart.

There it was. Again. Twice in less than 24 hours was viscous, even for her.

I set the phone face down on the desk and stared at the login screen until my reflection blurred.

“He also wouldn’t want me to wrap myself in tinsel and sing ‘Jingle Bells’ on command,” I muttered. “But sure. Let’s play the ‘what would he want’ game again.”

I typed in my password and dove into my inbox before my brain could go anywhere else. That was the point: drown in work until the noise in my head got too tired to scream.

Being an office admin had sounded boring when I was twenty. At forty-five, it was exactly what I needed. Predictable. Manageable. I handled scheduling, vendor contacts, purchase orders, and all the weird problems no one else wanted to deal with at our little logistics company.

By nine, I’d answered seventeen emails, rescheduled two meetings, and created a spreadsheet so beautiful it made me emotional. Color-coded tabs, conditional formatting, formulas that actually worked. If there was an afterlife, my husband was up there clapping at my pivot tables.

The thing about grief, though, is it doesn’t care how busy you are. It just… waits. Patient little bastard.

Around ten, my boss popped his head over my cubicle wall. George was in his fifties, perpetually harassed-looking, and currently wearing a tie with cartoon reindeer on it.

“Morning, Tim,” he said. “You got those end-of-year invoices ready?”

I clicked over to the right folder. “Almost. I’ll have them to you by lunch.”

“Perfect.” He smiled. “And hey— ugly sweater thing tomorrow, don’t forget.”

“I don’t own an ugly sweater,” I said. “Unless we’re counting my entire wardrobe.”

He chuckled. “You’re fine. Just show up. Carla’s bringing cookies.”

“Ah yes. Bribery. The true spirit of the season.”

He shook his head, still smiling, and disappeared back toward his office. I watched the top of his reindeer tie vanish past the cubicle wall.

I could handle cookies. I could handle ugly sweaters and forced small talk and the playlist of overplayed Christmas songs.

What I couldn’t handle was the way “Silent Night” always, always made me see flashing lights and hear sirens.

My phone buzzed again, rattling slightly on the desk. I glanced at the screen.

MOM:

Call me on your lunch break, okay? I miss you.

Guilt pricked. I did miss her. I missed all of them. That was the sick joke: I loved my family. I just couldn’t be around their version of the holidays without feeling like my skin was peeled off.

I shoved the phone into my drawer and focused hard on the numbers in front of me.

Work. Email. Spreadsheet. Breathe.

I made it to lunch without crying, which I awarded myself a gold star for mentally. I ate at my desk, as usual. Turkey sandwich, bag of chips, the glamorous diet of a woman who had given up on impressing anyone but her cardiologist.

I’d just finished the last bite when the office TV, mounted in the break room doorway, caught my attention. It was usually muted, a 24/7 stream of news and weather that half the office ignored.

Today it wasn’t muted.

“—multiple car accidents reported on Route 23 this morning due to icy conditions,” the anchor was saying. Footage flashed: cars skewed at bad angles on the side of the road, hazard lights blinking in the gray morning light. A tow truck. A busted guardrail.

I froze, chip halfway to my mouth.

“Authorities are reminding drivers to slow down and be aware of black ice,” she continued. “One fatality has been confirmed—”

I didn’t hear the rest.

My ears started ringing, high and thin. The room tilted, just a bit. My hand slowly set the chip down like I was defusing a bomb.

Black ice.

The words hit the same spot they always did, deep and ugly. For a second, the office around me vanished and I was back in our old kitchen, ten years younger, standing by the window with my phone pressed to my ear.

“Mrs. Grayson?”

“Yes, this is she.”

“There’s been an accident—”

Someone laughed across the office. A stapler snapped. The clacking of keyboards and the hum of the printer came rushing back in.

My throat was tight. My chest ached in that familiar way, a hollow bruised feeling that never fully went away.

Get it together, Timber.

I closed my eyes for a second and focused on the feel of my feet on the floor, the edge of the desk under my fingers. The therapist I’d stopped seeing would be so proud.

In. Out.

When I opened my eyes again, the footage had changed to something else. A reporter standing in front of a mall, talking about last-minute shoppers.

I turned the volume down and went back to my emails.

Functional. Hollow. On autopilot.

A ghost with health insurance.

I caved and called my mother on my afternoon break, mostly so she would stop texting like I’d died too.

She picked up on the first ring. “Hi, honey!”

“Hey, Mom.” I cradled the phone between my ear and shoulder and shuffled papers around, pretending to organize. “I have ten minutes before I have to jump back into spreadsheet hell, so what’s up?”

“Oh, I won’t keep you,” she said, which was a lie we both politely ignored. “I just wanted to hear your voice. How are you?”

I considered answering honestly. I am haunted by the local traffic report and held together with caffeine and denial, thanks.

“I’m okay,” I said instead. “Busy.”

“You always say that.”

“Because I’m always busy. It’s kind of my thing.”

She sighed. “Your sister said you told her you’d ‘think about’ Christmas Eve.”

Traitor.

“I am thinking about it,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about it all day, in fact. Between invoices.”

“Well?” There was hope in that one word that made my stomach twist.

“Well what?”

“Are you coming?”

I spun my pen between my fingers, staring at the to-do list on my desk. Order toner. Email vendor. Fix calendar sync. Attend Christmas Eve family gathering and try not to scream.

“I don’t know,” I said, which was the truth. “It’s just… a lot, Mom.”

“I know it is,” she said softly. “I know it’s hard. It’s hard for all of us.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “I never said it wasn’t.”

“We miss you,” she continued. “The boys ask about you. Your father pretends he doesn’t, but he does. And we miss… him. Being together helps.”

There it was again. The space where his name used to fit. No one said it much out loud anymore. As if avoiding the syllables could keep the pain at bay.

“Being together also hurts,” I said quietly. “It’s not like I show up and suddenly feel all warm and fuzzy. Mostly I want to crawl out of my skin.”

“I know.” Her voice thickened. “But when you don’t come, it’s like losing you too.”

That landed like a punch.

I rubbed my forehead. “That’s not fair.”

“I’m not trying to be unfair,” she said. “I’m just… telling you how it feels.”

I could hear kitchen noises in the background, the clink of dishes, the faint sound of some Christmas song on the radio. For a second, I pictured her there, apron on, flour on her hands, trying to fill a house with enough food and noise to drown out the empty chair at the table.

Grief was a family hobby, apparently.

“I’ll… try,” I said finally. “Okay? I’ll try to come. No promises.”

She sniffled. “That’s all I’m asking. And if you change your mind, that’s okay too. We’ll love you either way.”

“I know.” I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you more.” She brightened. “Now go do your important office things.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “These sticky notes don’t organize themselves.”

She laughed, and for a moment, the heaviness loosened. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Will do.”

We hung up. I stared at my phone for a second, then set it down gently like it might shatter.

Try to come.

I wanted to. I also wanted to never sit at that table again and pretend the toast didn’t feel like a performance.

I shoved the feelings into the box in my head with the ornaments and the accident and all the other things I didn’t have time to process, and I buried myself in work until the sun went down.