Christmas Cards

"It is a lovely snowy afternoon. I have most of the house decorated for the christmas season. I collect Santas for those of you who don't know me, so that is always the theme of my house. I have an amazing variety and I have just finished putting the last ones up. The tree will go up the weekend and then it will be time to start baking. I bake 3 or 4 different types of cookies, depending upon how energetic I feel and I make a big container of nuts and bolts, a perennial favourite with a certain family member.

I have finished doing the last of my christmas cards. While I enjoy doing them, it is also a time of reflection and sadness. I keep a record of the people I send cards to and every year there seems to be another deceased on my list. When I think back over the years to the people I have lost the list becomes very long and my card giving list becomes much shorter.

In the beginning it was family members whose names dropped off one by one. My grandmother Sarah Elizabeth King, a continuing presence in my life, then my aunts Maude and Roxie, my mother's sisters who were such an integral part of my childhood, although I only met them once. Then their husbands' Willard and Louis, fondly remembered and missed.

Lately though it has been friends who I have said goodbye to. Dorothy, my half sister's mother gone for 2 years now, Richard a cousin I never met, but "discovered" while doing our genealogy, we wrote and exchanged christmas cards every year until his death. Ruby, with the beautiful hair and dynamite smile, I still have the angel you made me for my tree. Marie's daughter Crista, I can't put your name on the card this year. I miss you little one. But I'll have a glass of the eggnog your mother loves and drink to you.

I remember each of them with fondness tinged with sadness and can't help but wonder who will be missing from my list and my life next christmas. I hope that it is none of you.", I whisper.

Are you listening?