Hope for the Holidays

The holidays are my favorite time of year, from right around this week until a bit after New Year's. There's something about the world during all of this that feels...different. I understand why so many cultures have celebrated it; not just because it was a turning point, when the weather began to shift back towards warmth, but because it was full of something deeper, a time for thought, introspection and possibility.

People just seem happier, even if they aren't, really, and the world becomes something magical, with the lights, the clarity of cold air and the sounds and smells, the bells and woodsmoke, particular to the season.

I love it all, truly, but sometimes...it isn't easy. There are ghosts for me. I mean, they're there, all year, but the ones that haunt the holidays are a little stronger, more prevalent. I'll be alone for Christmas this year, for the first time in a very long time. Jennifer's going to Florida for the week and Katie, like everyone else, will be spending the day with her family. Mine will be over here in the early morning, but likely gone by noon. I'm not sure how to feel about all that yet.

My mom met my stepdad when I was 18. I was already living on my own in the old trailer, had been since I was a senior in high school and could walk up the steps to get inside again. My mom was living with my grandfather, who needed 24-hour care we couldn't afford to give him otherwise. She'd take care of him during the day and, more often than not, I'd go and take care of him overnight, so she could rest. But that's none of it the point.

My stepfamily moved in with the two of them the summer of my 18th year, just before I turned 19. I volunteered to stay with my grandfather, rather than going to my family's Christmas, back when I still had enough alive to do the big gathering. That was the last year, though we didn't know it then, obviously. He and I watched TV together and the little ones, my younger soon-to-be step-siblings, got to enjoy a real family Christmas the way we'd always done it, so it was good.

A week later, very early New Year's Day, Ian killed himself. Three months after that, my grandfather passed. It was hard, then, being alone in the world, truly alone, for the first time. My mom sought solace with my stepfather, which was only fair, then they got married and that year they went to his family's Christmas and forgot to invite me. There was no malice or anything. In all her own pain, she forgot and he'd assumed she had asked. It was just something that slipped through the cracks, is all.

My best friend called to see how my day had been, sometime after ten Christmas night. I told her about all of it. She asked if I'd eaten and I told her I hadn't, as I was out of food again (there were a couple of years when I was only eating every few days). We ended up sitting in the parking lot of Albertson's after I'd broken into a local farmer's market and taken some fruit, because nothing else was open, leaving money and a note on the counter. She fell asleep and I cried listening to her new Lifehouse CD.

A week later, very early New Year's Day, I stood at my door and watched snow fall in Louisiana for the first time in as long as I could remember.

It taught me something that I carry to this day, one of those things that I keep wrapped safe and tight in my heart. There is hope. Always hope. And if you remember that, the ghosts can become good company, visitors with whom to share that dark, contemplative time of year, I suppose. It can, at the very least, turn the memories from a sharp sense of loss to something softer, something that, even if touched by melancholy, can still be beautiful, as a sad smile is still, at its heart, a smile.