New Year's Day

I have always taken down the trees on New Year's Day, working on the theory that the New Year is a time for new beginnings.
So this morning, I got up and got started. Normally Kieron would be up early, irrespective of how late he had gone to bed and would offer to help by dismantling his own tree, leaving trails of lametta over his carpet, ready to clog up the vacuum cleaner. So cereal munched he would get started. This could take most of the day, depending on how side-tracked he would get by playing in his room.
Once I had finished, he'd hoover for me, catching all the stray bits of tree and the occasional bauble. This led to me having to dismantle the cleaner and poke pencils down the nozzle to free the offending decoration.
After everything was boxed away ready for next Christmas, he helped put everything in the loft. My loft is on two levels: the main loft was also my office and the kids computer and dartboard area. The lower level is dark and cramped and this is where all the Christmas bits live eleven months of the year.
Other things are also stored in there: the children's old school stuff, baby clothes that I couldn't part with, Jade's party dresses from her 'little girl' years, items of my parents and even things from my childhood.
Because it's so small and awkward for an adult to get into, last year Kieron climbed in there, using an old settee cushion as a crash mat so he could tumble head first into the depths without hurting himself. In previous years, I've squeezed in and passed everything out to him in readiness for Christmas and after Christmas he would pass it all back to me to put away.
I lifted the boxes and trees up into the loft and Kieron pulled them into the dumping ground. I remember asking him to try and stack everything fairly neatly round  the sides so that he would have room to move around and also to make it easier when they all had to come out again. He didn't, instead he found the odd  treasure that just HAD to be liberated and that took precedence. In the end I told him not to bother about it being tidy and that we could sort it all out at a later date.
This Christmas, I climbed into the loft's depths and pulled everything out. I found a treasure that just HAD to be liberated...one of Kieron's socks, left behind from a previous excursion that I wasn't aware of, smelling of trainers and little boy feet. I didn't put everything back there today. I left it all in the main loft. I don't go up there now unless it's absolutely necessary, because that is where I lost my son. It's where my life ended too.