Despite the title of the song at hand, there is nothing bleak about the scene at my Mom’s new home. For our first family holidays in the new digs, I wanted to soften the wooden frame of the kitchen, adding some velvet curtains and evergreen garland to lend light and warmth to the area.
I’m not sure I’ll be decorating our home this year – it feels a little too daunting, and I’m a little too lazy. Andy usually puts up our tree and decorates it, and that will be enough. But for Mom’s home, I wanted to add some extra pizzazz to the festivities, especially this year, as we’ll be spending Christmas Eve there.
I asked Mom to run some errands while I set it all up, wishing for her to be surprised. Christmas music played in the background, and this song gave me brief pause as I remembered family Christmas moments of the past.
It will be a different sort of Christmas without Dad, but even in his absence, we feel him still with us. He’s there in the quiet moments, in the times when we would have wandered into the family room to find him watching television or plotting his next bets at OTB. He’s there in a remembered comment, or an offhand laugh, winking from a framed photo, or sending some sign in his own subtle manner.
The holidays have aways been tinged with an underlying melancholy, in the way that they force us to examine what matters, to find the best parts of ourselves and try to keep them present for the year that follows.
