They’re playing the continuous Christmas Songs already. It isn’t even Halloween night, yet, and the Christmas songs are filling the air tonight. I have to admit, it made me feel warm and happy all over again. I mean, they used to start the Christmas songs on Thanksgiving night, but playing them now? That’s even better! For the last five years I’ve always looked forward to this time of the year. There’s always something magical and innocent at Christmastime.

Shortly after the happiness of Christmas came, I was overwhelmed with sadness. This will be the first Christmas in a long time that we’ll be going through without our daughter here. Without the happiness and joy she brought us every year. She wasn’t a given. She was a gift. I wondered what she would have asked for Christmas this year. The American Girl Doll of The Year? Last year she wanted to shadow mommy so badly she asked for an iPod and a nose piercing. I remember her first Christmas. I was playing in the college concert band and I had a solo. I remember seeing her perched on my mom’s lap, holding a candy cane and smiling at me. She was only 10 months old, but she knew who I was.

The Christmases after that seemed to fly by. Just ten short years later, I am planning to leave a bouquet of blue roses on her grave on Christmas Day. It shouldn’t have to be this way.