A year ago, I knew with certainty that my mother would pass from our world before long. We, my parents, my brother and myself, shared an intimate Christmas morning at my childhood home. Momma, whose eyes shimmered like tinsel as soon as the weather cooled and the air seemed to take on the scents of gingerbread and cinnamon, sat at the edge of the loveseat uncomfortably and smiled/cried while we unwrapped the gifts she had so lovingly presented (knowing it was her last year to play Santa)...and I suspected the tears weren't all in joy. She was hurting.



We posed for a quick photo—again, knowing this year was the last—and went to my aunts' home next, where Mom was forced to leave very early. That's when you knew it was bad. She was a trooper and suffered silently through a lot of family gatherings that last year. I was living with my aunts at the time, so when my immediately family left early that wet, cold Christmas day, I felt the chill in the pit of my stomach as I went downstairs to sit alone in the dark.

But something else happened on Christmas day, 2005. I received my first piece of correspondence from Nick. I'm not saying that one good cancels out one bad, or that we're on a teeter totter that ever levels out, only that a light touched my darkened life that day...and that I am so grateful. I think I've shed more tears this year than I have totalled in all the years that have come before—and many of them, many many of them, have been in appreciation of a man that asked nothing of me but for me to let him be there. And the enormity of that, of a person that would willingly put himself in a situation so terrible so early on in a relationship, causes me to stand back and see a bit more of the whole picture and realize...realize so intensely that...I am so lucky.

I don't want to get all Pollyanna on you, but search for the good, and you'll surely find what you're looking for. Merry Christmas and I wish you all the best...the best people, the best memories, and the best day.