As we celebrate Christmas, set a place at the festive table for ...

Fourteen years ago, I celebrated the last Christmas of my old life.

I didn’t know it at the time, didn’t understand that my world would soon change in monumental ways. Four months after Christmas 2010, my husband and I adopted our son. In late June of 2011, my mother died unexpectedly. Some three months after that, my paternal grandmother passed after a long illness.

Writing that paragraph today, even knowing its substance, stuns me. My family experienced so much joy and sorrow that year. But if you had asked any of us that Christmas morning of 2010 what we expected to happen in the months ahead, no one would have predicted accurately.

Perhaps that was a blessing.

We enjoyed Christmases after that date, of course. Raising a child renews the holiday, and you see all the excitement and avarice in their little gleaming eyes. My father and siblings and I regrouped. In recent years, we gather for the holiday to open presents, share a meal and tell tall tales over the dining room table. We do not deny the past, but we do not dwell on it either.

Yet I always remember my mother. I always miss her. I always miss my grandparents — my maternal grandfather and grandmother died in 2002 and 2010, respectively.

And these losses makes me wonder. What does it mean to celebrate a holiday of family togetherness when so many people who defined that holiday no longer can attend? How do you live in the moment when that moment was shaped by those absent?

Answering that question probably requires a priest or therapist.

I see all of these dear departed, of course. I dream about them, at least once a week. I dream about my mother most often, and our encounters often center on my surprise at seeing her alive and well. Our conversations usually focus on the unreality of the situation, of my understanding even in unconsciousness that the meeting cannot last. My grandparents on both sides pop up as well in supporting roles.

I love them so much in these imagined moments. I see them so clearly. Yet the dreams fade, as all dreams do. Thankfully, mercifully, the love remains.

As a child, I understood in the naive way of children that my parents and loved ones would eventually die.

But it won’t be for a long time, I reassured myself. It won’t be until I’m an old person myself.

That didn’t end up being true. My mother left, too soon. My grandparents lived full lives, but I somehow expected them to at least stick around a handful of years more. As it stands, our son grew up without knowing any great grandparents. He knows my father, and my husband’s parents, but they live far away.

He didn’t have my experiences as a child. He won’t have my experiences as a teen or young adult. Why should he? It makes me wistful nonetheless.

No one can change these truths. People live and die, and holidays cycle through the yearly calendar without pause. We seize joy and togetherness wherever it can be found, hold one another close for the moments we share. We leave a place at that festive holiday table for our memories, if only to smile at them and raise a glass to the unknown year ahead.

In 2024, on this Christmas, I understand that. I wish I did back in 2010.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

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