‘This is our second Christmas without him, but the grief is still so fresh’

Two years and one week ago, my sister got married in a beautiful small ceremony with all our closest family. It was a freezing, blue sky day. My sister and her wife said their vows wearing white, with shaking hands, in front of both our families. Our faces hurt from smiling. We lined up and took photos in beautiful frozen gardens and laughed while we awkwardly placed two new families so eagerly beside each other. We complained of being cold as we walked to the pub. We held hands and you could see our breath in the air. My phone battery died. We had not idea what was just around the corner.

As we arrived at the restaurant Dad closed the door on my granny’s hand. She was ok. It wasn’t something we worried too much about, these things happen. Just a small bruise. We raised glasses and made jokes. Dad made a speech, something that he was always excellent at. He leant over the brides and made everyone laugh. We were lit by candlelight and gifts were exchanged between families. We sat to eat and Dad over-poured water into a glass. It spilled onto the table. I swotted it up with napkins. It was an odd moment, and I looked at him. He couldn’t seem to understand where the top of the glass was.

A week later, when we were at home, there more more strangeness. Dad was bumping into things and had a vacant look on his face. I called an ambulance. They sent him home from A&E after a scan. He had had a mini-stroke, but he was himself again. These things happen, we will keep an eye on it, we made a doctor’s appointment for the following week.

A doctor’s appointment was followed by an eye appointment. He had lost nearly all of his peripheral vision. Odd. Another episode. Another scan.

It was then that everything changed. I can pinpoint the exact moment. Tomorrow two years ago. My mum told me in the kitchen. It was dark outside. I had hot tea in my hands and I was holding my five month old on my lap. I was stressed about his lack of dirty nappies that day. My husband told me to sit down, mum had called him on the way home to warn him about what was coming. I overheard him on the phone and thought I was getting a surprise early Christmas present.

It wasn’t that.

Dad had a brain tumour. He had not had a stroke like we previously thought.

My initial reaction was to fuss over the baby and the hot tea, I couldn’t figure out what to put down first. Later I cried in a way I had not done since I was a child, but in a way that would become very familiar over the coming two years.

Dad was diagnosed in December and died six months later.

He had brain surgery a few days before Christmas that year. We got him home for Christmas Eve. We were so happy. We sat in the kitchen and drank champagne as he regaled us with That’s Life by Frank Sinatra, buoyed by having survived major brain surgery. We were so full of warmth and love and hope. It was Christmas and we were together. I can still smell the tree. He held my hand in his big soft hand, as we watched the boys watch Paw Patrol and ate mum’s mince pies with extra cream. It was going to be ok. He was my dad. Of course it would be ok.

The next six months were spent caring for him as he rapidly disintegrated. I will spare the details. The hope was sliced away at with each passing day. It was not ok.

Christmas trees will always remind me of him, and of that time. That room, in my parents house, with a Christmas tree in it, is difficult to see now. That Christmas was the last time I can truly say we, as a family unit, were happy, in that specific kind of way that you can only be, before life inevitably happens. Before death and illness loomed over us. Christmas reminds me so clearly of the hope and the love that we had, that was so soon taken away.

This is our second Christmas without him, but the grief is still so fresh. It’s hard to explain this, but a part of me still can’t believe he is gone. I still go to call him. I still have to process, over and over again, that I will never see him again. I see him in my dreams, just out of reach. Every time I think about what happened, I am shocked just like it’s the first time.

Christmas for us, with all its happiness and togetherness, is a poignant reminder of the absence of Dad. Grief is my silent companion in all the festive cheer. A cry in the car home after a Christmas dinner with friends. A moment on the Christmas tree farm, when I am unexpectedly sucker punched by loss. Every ornament hung and every familiar scent can trigger a cascade of bittersweet emotions.

This year, creating new traditions with my boys and finding solace in the old has become a gentle act of healing. We visit Mal’s grave. We collect white feathers and we talk to the stars. We acknowledge the sadness and try to turn it to the light.

Christmas, and Christmas trees, will always remind me of how precious these moments are. And how quickly life can change.

Hold space for those who carry the quiet burden of grief at Christmas.

Photography by Josh Boot on Unsplash.