When he won´t be home for Christmas...

Well, it is that special time a year, those special days with those closest and dearest to us. All the traditions. All the time together. But he won´t be home for Christmas this time...

My sister just blogged about our first Christmas without our Dad -  "Den første julen". And not just him, also Mom will spend this time apart from us. It is a special time, for all, in special circumstances.

I´m sitting at Starbucks, listening to my favorite Christmas CD (Mosaic choir) and looking through pictures of Dad and trying to sob quietly. The tears come almost as soon as I see his dear face, the pictures where he smiles and the ones where he is in pain. Life has continued to go on, we think about him, but life has moved forward... and then suddenly it all comes back, and mountains of tears appear from nowhere. It hits me again, that I have actually lost him, and that I can´t believe how he is just gone. I don´t think it´s possible to prepare for it. Even if I had, it would not be possible to know how I would feel and react. It is so different from everything else I have experienced in life.

I smile when I hear Christina talk about him. Several times she´s been moved to tears, tears of joy, just knowing in her heart that he sees her, cheers for her, is so proud of her. "It´s like he´s looking down from heaven and just cheers me on in what I am doing, saying: "Keep going, Christina, you can do this!" And when I was going through four days of intense exam last week, she was telling me: "I felt like he knew, that he sees you and your final exam, and is just telling you to keep up the good work, that you are doing so good!"

I wish I could see what she sees, that I could feel the same way and see him like she does. And sometimes when she talks I get a glimpse, a small picture in my mind about him smiling to me, now, and for a second I see those proud eyes I remember so well, knowing how I was the sunshine of his life, and believing that maybe he feels it even now, from heaven.

Usually it´s small incidents that makes me think of him. Like something reminding me about him - the sunset, a cup of coffee, a grandpa with a child... and that other night when I was about to wake up. It must have been 5.30 in the morning and I hear Magnar coming into the room and over to where Kaleb and I sleep, trying to wake him up without disturbing me. "Wake up, Kaleb! It´s time for you to read!" Kaleb slowly wakes up and goes with his Dad to the livingroom to read for a home assignment. They have a goal at school to read 450 minutes a month in their spare time, it´s the last day of school and he has 1,5 hours left to read.

Afterwards I lay quietly in bed, and the memories from my youth flood my mind. Of all the early mornings when my Dad would wake me up while everyone else were sleeping, to study for a test that day. I would read like crazy the weeks before, go to bed early and ask him to wake me up early, so that I could get another hour or so of reading before school. Such small events... I suddenly remembered everything about it. The pitch darkness outside, how he never once forgot, how I didn´t put on an alarm, just counted on my Dad to wake me up, the feeling sitting in my bed - half asleep - reading, while hearing him prepare to leave for work in the story below. Sometimes eating breakfast together just the two of us, in quietness and darkness, thinking about the test that day, not knowing how lucky I was, how safe, how someone was holding me, surrounding me, taking care of me, that I was leaning on someone the whole time without even knowing...

So with all this in my mind we move into the core of Christmas. With and without our closest ones, with old and new ones to celebrate with, tears of joy and tears of sorrow, with gladness and pain, knowing that it´s okey, that I´m allowed to feel this way as long as I need to, knowing that though time passes and life moves on, I´m still allowed to cry, still allowed to miss him, still letting him affect my days and future. That in some way I will always grieve over him, always miss him, and something I never knew before has now entered my life never to go away, and even that is okey and part of life.

So... with that.... from the islands of Hawaii to you all -  

Have a very merry, and blessed Christmas everyone!