i’ll have a blue christmas without you

today, we received 2 christmas cards for my aunt ella.  the knowledge that there are people out there who don’t know she’s gone baffles me.  how could anyone who loved her not know?  how could this world still feel the same without her in it?

i miss her more now than i did right after she died.  it seems that time has only magnified the hurt.  the holidays are dismal without her.  i just want her to be here.  i want to wake up on christmas morning and run into her coming out of the bathroom.  i want to sit at the kitchen table and share a cup of tea while we make our annual gingerbread house with my sister.  i can’t stop thinking about all of the things i should be doing…and am not because she’s gone.

none of us want to acknowledge christmas this year.  but i know that aunt ella would be furious if she knew that.  she’d be furious to know that we are still mourning her.  but what she never understood was that we needed her as much as she needed us.  every single one of us felt so blessed to be a part of her life.  i still feel that way, despite the fact that my life is very different without her.  i still consider myself one of the luckiest people alive simply because i got to have her as MY aunt.  she belonged to me and that makes me proud.  she is everything, even in death.

i can’t imagine living the rest of my life without her.  it seems strange, still.  my college graduation is fast approaching, and she won’t be here to see it.  she won’t be at my wedding, if there ever is one.  she won’t hold my first baby.  she won’t come for dinner at my new house in january.  on new year’s day 2010, we will have dinner at candy’s, instead of at her house…the first time in 26 years that new year’s day will be spent elsewhere.  some days i have trouble fathoming just how much life there is left to live that doesn’t include her.  it breaks my heart.

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aunt ella,

i miss you.  but i’m fairly certain that you already know that.  i feel you with me sometimes, as surely as i feel my heart beating against my chest.  thank you for watching over me.  thank you for letting me know that you still exist, in some form or another.  i feel certain that god has made you my guardian angel, and i couldn’t ask for a better one than you.  you are in my heart, always.

love.