Normally

It is Christmas Eve. Normally, I would be preparing, as I have for the past 9 years, for my mother to come and spend Christmas in our home.

Normally, Victoria would be clearing up her room today, preparing to give up her cozy bed to her Grandma.

Normally, I would be arranging the menu with Mummy, and making arrangements for her to come up to my home in the evening, armed with suitcases, boxes and bags – as if she were moving in “for a long winter’s nap”, but only because wherever she went, she wanted to have her special comforts.

Normally, when Mummy arrived, we would peek into those boxes and bags to see the goodies – jumbo cashews, Poppycock, chocolates, Pepperidge Farm cookies, her special, love-infused Christmas cake.

Normally, we would all be attending the Candlelight Service at our church this evening, returning home after midnight finally feeling the Christmas spirit, having enjoyed carolling, communion with friends and family, and luscious Jamaican hot chocolate and hard dough bread smothered in butter.

Normally, when all others were asleep, I would prepare the stockings for everyone, happily playing Santa with the little knicks knacks I had gathered over the past few months. I loved laying Mummy’s stocking on her bed, gently gently so as not to awaken her, faint memories of Christmases decades ago, when I would sense through my dreamy slumber, the laying of a stocking at my feet.

Normally, Victoria and Shane would awaken early, Shane first, despite having only a few hours sleep, to empty their stockings and then to race into Grandma’s room to show her what Santa had brought and urge her to empty her own stocking. – but not before a rich, steaming cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, a treat that she allowed herself only at my house, was brewed and placed beside her bed.

Normally, Grandma would oooh and aaah over everything in the stocking: “how did Santa know I needed this?” or “Thank you Santa”. And we would all happily play along, still believing that yes, Santa is real!

Normally, we would have our special breakfast of Christmas Egg, a Spanish-style omelette that I concocted the first year that Grandma spent Christmas with us, and that Victoria and Shane have demanded every Christmas since.

Normally, we would gather, dogs and all, Christmas carols playing softly in the background, to open our gifts, the living room a riot of paper, ribbon and bows, Victoria and Shane delirious over their gifts, Mummy eternally grateful for the thoughtfulness of friends and family.

Normally, Mummy and I would clear up the living room and then the kitchen, the comfortable banter of mother and daughter accompanying the swish swish of the dishwashing, sharing our intentions for the upcoming year, our plans for the rest of the day, and whatever else unfolded in the normalcy of the routine.

Normally ……

This Christmas is a “new normal”. This year, members of my family continue our journey on this earthly plane with Mummy here in spirit only. Yet we know that all we are is spirit, so we are very aware that she is with us, just in a different form.

There is the tendency for us to live out the normal traditions. We have decided to create some new ones, and we will see how these emerge. I have given myself permission to dwell a bit in the old normal, but just a bit, for this Christmas my normal is to be present to whatever comes up, to the joy of my family being together, to the generational love expressed, to thoughts of gratitude and love for all those who make up my family.

Many people have said to me “Christmas will be hard for you this year, the first one without your mother”. I smile, for a know that Christmas will be normal – not necessarily in terms of the things I do, but in terms of the love, joy and gratitude that is normal, constant, never changing.

I am wishing you all a happy, normal Christmas, where we all remember the true meaning of who we are – the spirit of love, expressing in unique and wonderful ways, as it did in Jesus the Christ, and as it does in every one of us.