Grief becomes more real at Christmastime. As the years roll by, sometimes we tuck away thoughts of those we’ve loved and lost like photographs in an album, but during the holidays it becomes nearly impossible to keep the cover closed. The minutia of life takes on a heightened glow, each piece a vestige of what life used to be. December brings the first fall of snow, silver-wrapped presents, hot cocoa, and ornaments. There are festive songs in the stores, lights on the bushes, evergreen branches in the windows. 

Every wish of good cheer is inexplicably bound up in the “better days.” All it might take are the opening notes of Silent Night, and the photo album bursts opens and memories change from monochrome to color. 

At Christmastime, it feels nearly impossible to pretend that we haven’t lost. 

A couple years ago, I wrote a blog post called Loving and Losing about a little house on a bending road in West Virginia. My Uncle Gary and Aunt Dolly lived there. They weren’t really my uncle and aunt, not really anything by blood to me, but they loved me and my sisters like we belonged to them. 

I have vivid memories of being babysat as a little girl, catching bugs in the backyard and helping Dolly can vegetables. As the years passed, Gary lost his hearing and Dolly her sight, and they truly depended on each other in a uniquely beautiful depiction of marriage.

In 2019, Uncle Gary had a terrible accident and was in the hospital, barely able to communicate, before eventually passing away on the last day of July. Not long after the funeral, Dolly and I spoke over the phone. She described his final gift to her. A few days before his death, he rallied and in a voice as clear as a bell, told her over and over how much he loved her. 

“Do you know when you first fall in love and you feel so much passion and excitement?” Dolly asked me. “That’s how I felt that day. No one can know how elated I was seeing him like that.”

Sitting on my own porch swing a thousand miles away in Texas, I teared up listening to her.

“There’s nothing like true love,” she continued. “Nothing like being loved like that to get you through.”

It became routine for me to visit Aunt Dolly whenever I was in town. The next May I told her I was pregnant and the following summer I brought Jack with me. She couldn’t see him, but she held him on her lap and we laughed over his squirminess. 

This past July 31^st, I called her again. We chatted for a bit about how much we missed Uncle Gary, how she still pined for him two years later. We talked about the joys of motherhood. Bemoaned how quickly it goes.

Before I hung up, I said, “I love you. Talk to you later,” not knowing, never realizing, that this was the last conversation. 

A few months later I thought of her on their wedding anniversary. I nearly picked up the phone to call, but I became distracted. Life got in the way. What a funny way to put it. That phone call – that was life, as real as anything else.

I told myself I’d call later. I’d stop by her house over Christmas. When you move away, it’s easy to convince yourself that the people you leave behind continue on endlessly and without alteration, preserved in a space separate from time.

Dolly’s journey ended on December 4th. It’s difficult for my mind to grasp that on earth I won’t see her face again. That I won’t stop by and sit on the porch while the sun sets and the cows wander home from the fields. I can call but she won’t answer. 

Death hurts. It’s awful. Thinking of her, of all those we’ve loved and lost, sometimes feels unbearable. But I remember what she told me after the death of her husband: “We don’t grieve like the world grieves.” 

It convicted me then. It convicts me now. This life is just a moment. Physical blindness and love-sick grief – they are terrible things. But we’re not without hope. 

Christmas, that sparkling reminder of loss, also brings the gift of hopeful expectation. Long lay the world, in sin and error pining, ’til he appeared and the soul felt its worth. 

The arrival of Jesus brought us worth. It brought tidings of great joy because that baby placed in a manger would grow up to upend our natural order. He would overcome Death for all time.

I’ll see Dolly again someday and her eyes will be clear, her body healthy, her heart no longer grieving. I’ll see her just as I’ll see all of those who have died while holding on to hope in Christ.

Until then, I hope to be more like her – filled up with love. Ready to accept it, willing to give it, no matter the cost. And I hope to pick up the phone more often. To call when I think of you. Because we have today. We don’t know about tomorrow. 

Truly he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace.

“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.” 

“Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.” -I Thessalonians 4:13-14; 17