This is my first Christmas without my dad. He died in July after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease. He was 74.
I've been married for 15 years and have a 13-year-old son. This is the 16th Christmas Eve night that I have not spent with my parents. Yet here I am on my third cry of the day because my dad's not here.
I'm an only child, so Christmas Eve was always just the three of us. Christmas Day was spent with extended family but the night before was ours alone. After I stopped believing that a fat man in a red suit was scooting down our chimney, I became a pain in my mom's ass for a few years begging her to let me open gifts early. Over the years, one gift on Christmas Eve eventually became all gifts in Christmas Eve, which was how my mother's family did it when she was a child. We would put the PBS Yule Log on the TV in the other room so we could hear the music and I'd "play Santa" and hand out the gifts from under the tree. It was always a special, cozy time that was all ours.
I went away to grad school and later moved out to my own home, but I always came home for Christmas Eve. Just the 3 of us. When I got married, of course, our tradition changed. I had my parents over for Christmas Eve dinner and we'd open gifts with my husband. Our son was born right before our third Christmas and again our traditions changed. My son got older and my dad got sicker, traditions evolved.
Last year, as we had for the previous few years, we went to my parents' house on Christmas Eve and opened gifts. We were gone before dark to go to my sister-in-law's house. We came back the next day for my family's dinner (a late lunch, really) and then later had a dinnertime dinner with my husband's family.
That brings me to today. I'm not thinking about the last 16 Christmases. I'm in tears over the 15-20 Christmases before that. I'm crying over that special closeness that I haven't experienced the same way in years and suddenly I'm missing it like it was yesterday. My mom is home alone tonight on Christmas Eve. I can't go to her house and "abandon" my family but she's not going to stay here overnight either. I saw her today and she's fine but I feel overwhelming guilt that I can't spread myself out and be everywhere at once. And I am so, so sad that my dad isn't here anymore. I've been so strong since July, telling myself my dad had really been gone for a long time (if you know Parkinson's, you know what I mean) and this was just his spirit leaving his traitorous body. But this is the first time that I've experienced something that I so closely associate with my dad and it's like he just died yesterday or is dead all over again. I miss my dad. Not the guy who he was the few years, but the guy I grew up with. And I find that I'm begging him to visit me tonight. In a dream. I need him to come to me and hold me and tell me it will be OK. That he's OK. That mom will be OK. That this will get easier. And I want to tell him again that I love him and I miss him.
