WELCOME TO WIDOWED WORLD

22 December 2009

Greetings,

For many of you this will be the first Christmas without your partner and I know how hard it will be attempting to raise a smile or to join in the customary festive activities, but the time leading up to Christmas will almost certainly be more poignant than the actual days when much will be happening to distract your thoughts and hold your attention. Sometimes it’s easier to be with friends or even to be alone rather than with family but whatever way you’ve chosen mark the festival, be sure to be kind to yourself. I remember waking on my first Christmas alone and realising there would be no carefully chosen surprise gifts waiting for each other under the tree; it was quite hard watching the rest of the family open theirs. Nowadays, I buy myself a gift, save any small ones I receive and whilst opening them on Christmas morning, think of the poverty stricken familes in Eastern Europe who will have received and be excitedly opening the shoeboxes we prepared in November. I sent one box to BFPO too this year and will try to imagine the soldier who’ll receive it.

As this Boxing Day would have been our fiftieth wedding anniversary, for the first time in about seven years, some of the family are coming to me for Christmas. I’ve been busy shopping, baking, decorating the house, gift wrapping (everyone is having a gift wrapped shoebox instead of a stocking) and doing all the traditional things that used to make up our family Christmas’.
There’s still lots to do like making up the beds and keeping the kitchen floor clean and delivering last minute cards, but that’s all part of the build up. In my childhood we always knew everything was ready when our mother (or one of us) mopped the kitchen floor for the final time on Christmas Eve. For the first time in five years I’m enjoying preparing for Christmas and can’t wait to have our traditional Christmas Eve sausage casserole bubbling away in the oven. A Dundee cake is baking as I write.

Midnight Mass doesn’t always feature in my celebrations but this year we’ll attend en masse at the local village church in which my husband and I were married and I’ll give thanks for the forty five years we shared together. There will be happy and poignant memories but I’m now a different woman and will go into the New Year knowing that each year really does get easier and that even at sixty eight years of age, life presents many new opportunities.

Holding you all in my heart this Christmas time and wishing you grace and serenity in the coming year,