Seasons blurred

I absolutely love Christmas - everything about it! One of my favourite parts is wrapping presents and trying to make how I dress them look better each year. So I was having a lot of fun last night wrapping up presents for the family in red or gold paper, tying them with thin bits of tinsel and putting bows on them, when I came to write the gift tag on the one for Dan's Dad. Suddenly I stopped and the tears came with no warning.

I've been doing really well these last couple of weeks. I've been so busy - out every evening last week either with meetings for work or something for church, then there's been all the planning for Christmas and things have just been so hectic. I have to say I haven't had much time to think about Dad - that's not to say I forgot him because I think about him every day now - but I haven't had time to stop and think about what's happened and carry on with grieving. I've been going to bed after midnight most nights too so even those times late at night where normally I would feel low have been taken over by tiredness and I've quickly fallen asleep. Some people may say it's good that I've been like that, but I really feel it is so important to have those times to stop and reflect, to cry or feel depressed, to ache to see the person you've lost and to think about the future with out them. I've never been one to bottle my feelings up, and while I am still grieving - which I know will be for a long time yet - I need those times to help me work through the many different emotions that I've been feeling over the past couple of months. I feel a real need to grapple with those feelings and to eventually reach a point in the future where I am no longer feeling confused by the shock of Dad dying so suddenly, and at the thought of him being taken away before I had chance to share so much more of the future with him. I feel content that God has taken him, but death is such an unnatural thing that it's very hard to understand. God didn't create the world with death - it was as a result of human sin. So yes, dying is unnatural and even when we have the wonderful assurance of knowing loved ones have gone to be with the Lord because they trusted in Jesus, it is a strange thing for the mind to process for those of us left behind.

So back to wrapping the presents. Because I have not been giving myself time to deal with what has happened lately, it's hard to handle when small things trigger thoughts. I was about to write 'dear dad' on this gift tag, and it dawned on me that I wouldn't be writing one for my own Dad. It was such a strange feeling - we are living and getting on with life without Dad, even though none of us have still fully taken it in. The fact that we haven't bought him a present is one of those small confirmations that it really is true that he's died. Sometimes it needs those small confirmations - I saw him 20 mins after he died, I went to his funeral, I've visited his grave, I've told people over and over about the events of that weekend - but they are all big things that have in many ways seemed surreal and looking back it feels wierd that they happened at all. But not having a gift tag to write to him was such a small thing, but something that hit me as a reality. It seems so wrong not to be including him in Christmas. When I think hard about him I can hear him and see him and completely imagine all the laughs and jokes we shared. He just seems so real still. He is not a memory yet. I only saw him once every few months anyway, so it still always feels like he's just at the family home as always, just on the end of the phone or a text message away. I ache to see him because I know that I can't, but I haven't begun to truely miss him yet. But I know that I will, and I am pretty sure that it will begin in just over a week when we all get together to do Christmas. There are so many things about him that I am going to miss. I still have text messages from him on my phone - he wrote the funniest things in them. He had a unique and wonderful sense of humour and sometimes I just expect to look at my phone and see a text from him to brighten up my day at work. But they haven't come. I know why of course, but it's so hard to believe that my strong, funny Dad, the man who I know was proud of me, who's eyes twinkled when I acted loud and stupid just to make him sigh in despair when really he thought it was funny- him - he's not here anymore.

It's taken me ages to write this. Life has been going along as normal for so many days now that while writing I've had to stop so many times and just think, scrunching my forehead in bewilderment that I'm actually writing this stuff at all. Christmas will no doubt be hard, but it will be one hurdle over with in what will be a difficult year ahead, as the seasons go by without him for the first time. I guess I will take things as they come. It's difficult not to start thinking about the summer, and the enjoyment we shared over many of the things that make summer what it is - what is usually my favourite season will be blurred with sadness. I think of summer and I think of Dad. But for now I will just approach Christmas knowing that there will be a huge gap this year, but thankful that i shared 24 Christmasses with him. I have no feelings of bitterness about it - I haven't been 'robbed' of these times with him. I've been blessed with a childhood full of him, and it's great to think of how he contributed to my childhood Christmas fun! And now he will be enjoying far greater delights with the Lord than we can ever experience at Christmas.

Dear old Dad!! How we'll miss him.