The Last Christmas Mourning

Every year, I’ve gone back.
Back to my parents’ house,
back to the floor where wonder lived.
Watching small hands tear through paper
as if unwrapping the world itself.
In the laughter of my nephews and the awe in my niece,
I found the echoes of my own.
In their joy, I held the fragile magic of being a child again.
But not this year.

This year, the fire will crackle without me.
They will eat Monkey Bread, and I will not
be there to taste it.
I will not be there to see the half-eaten carrot
or the hoof prints of deer.
The gifts will pile in a room of pure wonder,
a room where I will not be,
and the spell will be theirs alone.

For the first time, I will not go back,
and the truth swells in my chest like grief:
I cannot go back.
I can never again be the boy I was,
who woke before the sun,
and who believed that mornings such as these
could infinitely glow.

That dawn has gone.
The boy’s footsteps no longer echo.
His laughter no longer rings.
And as much as I’ve tried to hold onto him,
he has slipped away,
leaving only the carved transformation
of what he has become,
through the cocoon
of a Christmas tree.

I mourn that little boy.
I mourn the weightlessness of captivation,
the smallness of a world where joy was simple,
where time stretched long enough to hold me.

That world is gone now,
and with it, the boy who belonged there.
Now I stand at the edge of myself,
looking back at all I cannot reclaim.
The door to my youth has closed,
not with the violence of finality,
but with the soft, cruel certainty of time.

And yet, the world does not wait for my grief.
A new door has opened,
and though I step through it excited and scared,
I know it is where I must go.
And I know it is where I want to be.

This year, I will sit in a different room,
beneath a tree of my own.
Beside my best friend, my wife, and the love of my life.
The air will carry the sound of our new laughter,
and soon I will hear my daughter’s own,
and I will see her little hands, and I will see her little toes,
and I will see that little smile,
so small, reaching for a world I can and will give her.
Or die trying.

I cannot go back to that little boy.
But perhaps, I can give her the mornings I once had.
Perhaps, in her joy,
I will find something even greater than what I mourn.
I am the father now.
I am the keeper of her magic.
It is my turn to wake early,
not as a boy to experience the enchantment,
but as a man to give it.
To light the tree,
to kneel on the floor and watch
as she unwraps the world for the first time.

I cannot go back.
But as I look ahead,
I see my wife’s eyes, and I see my wife’s smile,
and know that once again, I am home and
where I should be. Where I want to be.
With our hands clasped tightly,
my wife and I will create the deer prints ourselves,
and smile at one another, knowing that God
has not taken me from a home but given me
my own.

It is not the last Christmas morning,
but this has been the last of my Christmas mourning.
Praise You Jesus, for You are the grandest gift of all.