Not Like it Used to Be
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For me, Christmas is a bit of a rebellion.
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12 years ago, at Christmas, I was 4 months pregnant when we found out that my dad had terminal cancer. He potentially had weeks to live.
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We spent Christmas in the ICU.
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One of my clearest memories from that time is sitting in my car at a stop light, coming home from the hospital, watching pedestrians excitedly crossing the street clutching colourful bags of holiday gifts. They were chatting and holding hands and smiling.
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And I remember thinking, “How do they not know that the world is ending?”
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You see, my dad was my best friend. The world, as I knew it, had him in it. Without him, I wasn’t sure how the earth could keep spinning.
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The next Christmas, he was gone.
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It was my daughter’s first Christmas.
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We tried as best we could to pick up the pieces. But in all honesty, Christmas has never been the same since then.
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And that’s okay.
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It’s not supposed to be the same. To insist that Christmas stay “the same” is to deny the fact that my dad is no longer here with us to celebrate it.
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He’s not here- that’s a fact.
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But this doesn’t mean that I need to give up celebrating.
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Yesterday we decorated the tree. A song came on the playlist that reminded me of my dad. I stood with an ornament in my hand and cried.
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It didn’t ruin the moment one bit.
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This is just what Christmas looks like now. Bittersweet and beautiful and sacred and sometimes sad but still full of as much magic as we can pour into it.
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This year, we’re ALL gearing up for a holiday season unlike any other.
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If we allow ourselves to feel it all - to mourn what we had, what we now know, how it now has to be - we have a chance to create something beautiful anyway.
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Before/afters aren’t always easy. But we can do hard things. The magic lies in the unexpected beauty of broken pieces; in picking them up and honouring them by making something new.