This has been my first Christmas:

without my cat – 18 years of cat hair on everything, ‘helping’ me to wrap gifts, confiscating ribbons and bows, puking on the finished products….. cat slaves, need I say more?   she died in December this year

without my Mum – 6 decades of a 3 line whip to attend mass, turn up for Christmas lunch, and Boxing day tea, dragging sometimes reluctant kids with me, later, with instructions to bring back a doggy back for Freddy and aforesaid cat. Memories of vegetables reduced to mush, force feeding, disapproving looks as I down the sherry I only drink once a year (bought by her for me), conspiratorial meetings in the corridor with my sister for group hugs and quiet screams, exasperation, frustration, incredulity and amusement in varying degrees, but most of all, a warm enveloping feeling of love. I had to remind myself sometimes that the infuriating old dear in front of me having a minor tantrum because no one wanted Christmas cake (we told her every year not to buy one) was a vibrant, beautiful, intelligent woman who had an adventurous but hard life, brought up 4 kids without all the aids and trappings I had for my 2, suffered not just the loss of her husband, my dad, the man she loved unwaveringly all her life, at a cruelly young age of 54, but then suffered the loss of my lovely brother, aged only 53…. she died in June this year

and without my love who died in July this year – OK he didn’t ‘do’ Christmas, or any celebrations or anniversaries, apart from our private ones, but he was there, for all those years, supporting and loving me as I turned into an emotional mess trying to be everything to everybody with a big smile pasted on my face to hide my feelings. He was the one I came home to, not just at Christmas, but every day, who could lift my spirits just by the look on his face as I came through the door, the one who could always put everything in perspective with wise words and gentle humour, who surrounded me in the warmth of unconditional love and gave me courage and strength and a belief in myself I never had before I met him.

This Christmas has been so hard on so many levels, I’ve tried not to let it spill into the lives of the people I love, I’ve tried not to let Freddy down, but I miss him so much and entering into a new year without him is so painful I find it hard to breathe when I think about it.

And right about now, if he read this, he would be rolling his eyes, harrumphing …. and then enveloping me in a bear hug that would make everything alright again….  except he will never read it and my world has tilted so much I don’t recognise it anymore, and I have to learn to live in a new scary world without him.