This week I spent some time in my former residence in St. Marys, Georgia. With its recent tenants moved out, I haven’t spent much time in that house for the last two years.

With a new development currently being constructed literally in my own backyard, the woods that once lined that property have been replaced by a tall privacy fence and a berm which presents a radically changed landscape. I miss the peaceful natural setting of the woods that once stood there, although they consisted primarily of spindly pine trees to be eventually harvested for the paper industry. 

It’s definitely not the beloved wooded backyard of the home Rich and I purchased in January 2020. That has been erased forever. This is a new adaptation. More light, and for now beautiful sunsets from my living room. I’m told new landscapting is on the horizon as well.

Maybe that’s a good thing, because as I prepare to vacate again, perhaps permanently, that new frontier out back reflects in some ways my new internal reality and its radical changes. It makes it easier to move along.

Although there are some remnants of furniture scattered about the home’s interior, enough to create a still comforting space, it’s devoid of holiday decorations and reminders of the season. 

But does it matter?

As I sat quietly in the living room of that spacious place that was once my haven, with my now four-year old dog, Quint nearby, I understood that as we live and grow older, the holidays of our younger days follow us, taking different adaptations throughout the years, shaping our own changing internal landscapes. 

That first year without Rich, Christmas arrived in less than two months. I barely had time to prepare for the dreaded “Firsts”. My late mom, who was then in her mid-90s, and still mentally sharp, was staying with me, and as I wanted her, and the newly welcomed Quint, to have a special Christmas, despite navigating the Widowed Fog, I went all out in preparing for the holidays. 

I think that our purest Christmas memories are of the events that occured when our immediate, or “original” families, were still intact. Before marriages and new relationships presented the necessity of “dividing” the holiday time pie. I often long to have those days back. I feel like Will Robinson in that classic Lost in Space episode where he gets to return to earth at Christmas with all its holiday pleasures, but chooses to return to his spaceship to be with his family instead, because holiday is all about family.

If we no longer have “that family” – the one preserved so deeply in our beloved memories, the only way we might capture that spirit is to relive them in our minds and although those may be happy recollections, they also take an emotional toll. Many tell us to be thankful for our happy memories while they are still busy making their’s. We are, too, but it’s just that much harder to make them later in life as we begin again. 

So we celebrate and observe the season in our newly created adaptations because there are no planes, or trains, or other forms of transportation that can bring us to visit with those who are no longer here to join us in celebrating the season. 

That ticket would be the ultimate Christmas gift.

But, as I’m fond of saying, “There’s no time like the present, and no present like “the time”. Learning to enjoy life in the moment has become so important to my emotional well-being. I think in many ways, that is what I’ve learned through life with my dogs.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.