My Christmas Message

I love Christmas. It’s the most amazing time of the year. I get this buzz in my tummy as soon as the calendar changes to December. I’m frenzied buying and wrapping gifts. Itching to get the tree up and house decorated. But this year it’s different. Christmas leaves me empty, cold and uninterested in any of it.

I’m sorry if I appear a Grinch or a miserable bitch but I’ve never had to deal with grief and I’ve never spent a Christmas without my Mother. Christmas will never be the same. The buzz has gone and has been replaced with this irrepressible pain and emptiness. I don’t want to drag you down so my smile is there but when you ask me – sometimes I can lie but other times no – I can’t particularly have a happy Christmas. I’m sorry. I don’t want to dampen your festive mood. I’m sorry.

I hope that all who have told me to cheer up or get into the festive spirit are lucky enough not to have had to deal with this crap. I will hide my disillusion from my three children as I want them to have an amazing Christmas like I always had. But please – before judging and criticising others – think. It’s the most wonderful time if the year – but is also a day which throws the biggest spotlight on the fact that not everyone gets to sit around the table and there’s one less set of presents under the tree. And that’s hard. Painstakingly hard.

I mean it with every part of me when I say I hope you have a lovely Christmas. But just be gentle and patient. This is the first of forever – a forever without my wonderful irreplaceable Mommy.

Merry Christmas all xx