Remembering Those We’ve Lost Through the Holidays.

Remembering Those We’ve Lost Through the Holidays.

Chestnuts are roasting in millions of homes across America. Living rooms have morphed into mini utopic winter wonderlands with life-sized, rotating snowmen and extravagant life-sized naivety scenes. Notes of pine and gingerbread stick to our ugly sweaters and follow us room to room.

Yet something is missing.

Frank Sinatra and Mariah Carey get us in the spirit. These singers who have synonymized their image with Christmas remind us that Santa is not only on his way, but he bears every gift. From a new rice cooker to a brand new Mercedes coupe wrapped in a gigantic red bow with free gas for life, so long as his milk and chocolate chip cookies are fresh, and positioned correctly on the edge of the mantle.

Still something is missing.

The aroma of mulled wine and cinnamon sticks lingers, but so does the memory of our loved one. We ache through the absence of our loved ones, which are triggered randomly. The presence of family and perceived love in others lives’ reminds us of the moments we had, and don’t have to create again. And we want that noise to stop. We want to burn the Christmas trees. We want Santa to fall off his sleigh to an imminent, but at least painless death, and wake up in the next year already. The loved ones who we have once shared the magic of Christmas with do not exist. The spell has been ripped away — its been torn apart like a heartsick kindergarten from…