The Quiet Grief of Christmas - 2024

Remembering the reason for the season has never been just a phrase to me. It is a reminder.

A reminder that the quiet melancholy I carry has a purpose. At almost any moment I feel half happy and half sad, and I would not want it any other way. That balance reminds me of the people I have loved and the losses that shaped my life.

There was a time when our family felt whole. That changed when the matriarchs of the family passed away and the center that held everything together slowly disappeared. My father whom I never actually knew, and my mother—who was everything good that remained—eventually left this world as well.

Yet the sadness I feel today is also a connection to them. It reminds me that love does not simply disappear.

Years ago I wrote about walking alone in this world. I did not yet understand how deep that feeling would become. But faith reminds me that none of us truly walks alone.

Christmas brings those feelings close again—the lights, the music, the familiar traditions. Sadness and light, living side by side.

Soon another year will begin. Another chance to do some good for someone else, just as my mother always believed.

Until my time here is finished, I will mention those who carry the same quiet grief in my prayers..

May God bless all of us.

The Knock At The Door

More than forty years have passed, but I still remember the knock at the front door.

When I opened it, a stranger stood there holding papers. A process server. He handed them to me and explained, calmly and professionally, that I had ten days to move out of my own house. I was to leave my wife, my son, and nearly everything I owned behind. I could take a few clothes.

Just like that, the life I had been living was over.

Recently I heard someone telling the story of his own divorce, and it brought all of that back to me. Not the anger—there really isn’t much of that left—but the memory of how suddenly life can change.

My divorce isn’t a story about blaming my ex-wife. Life is rarely that simple. Looking back now, the truth is the divorce was probably the best thing for both of us. Maybe even for my son, though that’s something we’ll never really know.

The reality is we probably never had much chance from the beginning.

We were very young. Her parents didn’t want us seeing each other, and we had just discovered she was pregnant. In those days the expectation was simple: if a child was coming, you got married. So we did.

Our backgrounds could not have been more different.

I grew up in a house filled with arguments and divorces. That was the model of family life I knew. My mother loved me deeply, and for that I’ll always be grateful, but growing up in that kind of turmoil leaves marks you don’t recognize until much later.

My wife came from a large, stable family with parents who stayed together for decades.

Looking back now, it seems almost inevitable that we would struggle.

What stayed with me most wasn’t simply the end of the marriage. It was the feeling that everything had been decided without me. One day I had a family, a home, and a life that—while imperfect—was still mine. The next day it was gone.

The pain of that moment stayed with me longer than I ever expected. Long enough that I quietly promised myself I would never again risk that kind of loss.

And I never did.

My ex-wife kept trying. She remarried several times over the years searching for the right fit. I admire that persistence.

My path went another direction. I focused on work, investing, and building stability where I could. Eventually I retired with some security.

Today I’m told my son and his family are doing well, and my ex-wife seems happy. For that I’m grateful.

Life didn’t turn out the way I imagined when I was young.

But I’ve learned something over the years: gratitude and disappointment can exist at the same time.

And sometimes that’s enough.    

Even now, all these years later, I sometimes think about that knock at the door and how a single moment can quietly divide a life into before and after.