On Christmas Day

My little sweetheart, my darling girl, it's Christmas Day and I'm with your parents. In a moment, we're packing up all the gifts under the tree and getting Gidget into your father's arms and driving over to see your brother and Michelle and the kids and have dinner and watch the endless games of Christmas Day NBA basketball and maybe by the end assemble on the lawn and gaze up into the sky to see the first full moon at Christmas in 38 years, mindful that you are, however unseen, so very near, far more near than can even be imagined.

But before all that, I just want to set down here the words that you wrote to me along with the beautiful scarf you knitted, for our first Christmas, some years ago, that I know by heart, that I recited at the end of my speech to and for you at your memorial (held incredibly on my birthday that year), that I think of and often speak aloud not only on this day, but many many days, to feel you near me. But as it is Christmas Day, let it today be foremost.

Thank you, my love, for finding and loving and helping me, even now from the remove of The Forever. Thank you for these words I hold so close and dear to my heart and soul:

My Dearest Michael,

I’ve been working on this in the green room and backstage since we came to Boston. I’d drape it around my neck to keep warm while knitting in the dark of the freezing wings. The cast is decisively in favor of the striped color combination.

It’s Christmas day, and I’m wearing my pajamas. I’m in my P.J.’s even if you’re reading this when the sun has set. Ryan is making another bourbon and coke even if you’re reading this as the sun rises. My Dad is reading aloud shocking statistics about religion or politics, my Mom is spraying perfume on the dog, and me...? I am missing you. Maybe one day we’ll spend Christmas together.

Coy says “You are where you’re meant to be”, and while I like that idea, I know, far too well, what it feels like to be in a world where everything feels wrong – where everything is wrong. You have also been to that place. And as the world spins on its own axis, people are lost in their own needs and trials. We falter blindly, and strive endlessly. But no matter where you are, whether you should be there or not, and no matter who is present... know that you are a treasure in your own right. If the chest is buried, the key is lost, or the map stolen, it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change the fact that it’s inside you. I just see what’s there. You carry it with you. What’s hidden can always be found.

I love you.
Your Gingersnap,
Summer