The first people on the list have had a house move since last year. I write the card, then address it with the unfamiliar street name.
Next, four non-movers, then another new address. This time I don’t know it. I send a message to ask. The card won’t be a surprise but that’s OK, cards aren’t really a surprise.
Three more that are exactly as they were last year – same address, same people – life matching list.
Then one with a new baby. How do they spell her name – with the H at the end or not? I scroll back through text messages to find the birth announcement. With the H. I write the card, and think how surreal it is that a little person who didn’t exist last Christmas is here today, and getting cards. I add her name to the list.
The Christmas card list is older than my kids, older than my marriage. I’ve been adding babies and editing addresses and saving new versions every year since 2001. And every year, it serves not only as a list of addresses for cards, but as a record of what has changed since the year before. New babies. New houses. New husbands. New surnames. A name added when he moves in with her. And sometimes, when it doesn’t work out, a name removed.
What I wish now is that I had all the lists, or at least the very first one from 2001. But I only have the newest one. There’s no way to look back and see how it grew and changed year on year. A file not saved – a paper-trail extinguished.
I keep going through the list, until I get to Elizabeth Fitzgerald. It catches me. I must have said something out loud, because my daughter who is doing her homework beside me asks what’s wrong. I tell her I’ve just come to my granny’s name on the list, and I’m feeling sad, because there’s no need to send a card this year.
I’ve been sending cards to granny for as long as I can remember – since I first started making homemade cards at school. Bringing them with me when we went to stay with her each Christmas – when I was the lucky one who got to stay on for an extra week after everyone else went home. Melted-butter one-sided toast and a real fire and books and toys and blankets and warmth and love. I saw her a lot less in recent years, but she was always there, the way people are. And now she’s not. It’s not the sadness that comes with real grief – not the kind that comes when someone dies too young, or too suddenly. It’s a moment of realisation, a jolt. For the first time ever, there’s no need to send her a card.
My daughter looks at me with her big grey eyes and says nothing at first. Then she has an idea. “Why don’t you write a card anyway mum,” she says, “And don’t post it, but just put it away somewhere special?” It’s perfect.
And I go on through the list, and see that there are two new names to add. Two great-grand-daughters to Elizabeth Fitzgerald, two nieces to me. Life-changing babies to all of us who know them. New to the list and new to the world. Oblivious to Christmas, but for those of us around them, making it complete.
It is a horrible feeling, isn’t it? I had the same situation last Christmas. My nana, my last grandparent, died a month before Christmas.
Your daughter’s idea is a beautiful one.
Merry Christmas Andrea!
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Ah, I’m sorry about your nana – hard when you’re away from home too.
But yes, merry Christmas and very best wishes for 2016!
Oh, that’s so lovely. What a sage idea of your daughter’s too. She’s wise beyond her years.
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I think kids just see things very simply, don’t they – so they see easy answers were we over-complicate things!
What a lovely idea to write the card anyway. I am missing my Nana this Christmas too. It doesn’t feel like Christmas is complete without her, but then I realise that all the Christmasses that I’ve had before now she was a huge part of and those traditions live on so she really is still here. <3
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That’s a lovely way to look at it Laura – I love that. It’s so true. My kids’ favourite thing about Christmas is packing up their new toys to go over to my dad’s house on Christmas Day – just like I did, going to my granny’s house, way back. Hope you had a lovely time over the last few days x
🙂 Happy Christmas
You too!
Too many of my friends have lost a parent this year, which makes my grief over the death of mine fresh all over again…
I also have a Christmas card list, or rather a set of printed labels, that I update every year – but I do keep the old ones. Just in case.
I hope you had a very happy Christmas x
Looking for Blue Sky recently posted…The Ups and Downs of Christmas
I know what you mean. Every funeral brings it all back, every time. But on a happier note, I hope you’re having a lovely Christmas – I’m considering it an ongoing thing 🙂
A very interesting and poignant way of looking at Christmas card lists and how they and events change as the years go by. Sad as it is it is also nice that it conjured up such nice memories of your granny. And what a very empathetic and astute daughter you have!
Hope you all had a lovely Christmas 🙂
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Ah, what a lovely post!I love adding names to the addresses-got to add two new little ones and already looking forward to adding at least one more next year!What a gorgeous idea by your girl too!
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I feel this way about my list too. My mother, now in her eighties maintains the same tradition but was sadly reporting to me the other day that she receives fewer cards now, and when a regular card doesn’t arrive she wonders if the sender has passed on. Her cards often also contain a letter, with updates from the year. I wish more took the time to do that in my generation.
I definitely get fewer cards now – I confess I did a little reconciliation between cards sent and cards received and was surprised! I remember when my mum got cards they almost always included a letter – old school friends updating on the year gone by, because they hadn’t seen each other but were still in touch. It was lovely. There was a strict rule that we weren’t to open the cards and put them up without her having the chance to see them so she could see which ones have letters, who had a new return address and so on. I have the same (not quite so logical anymore) rule in my house now with my kids. Long may card sending last.
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