“The first Christmas without my dad”

A αναγνώστριά, Anna F. from the city of Thessaloniki, wrote a text for one of the most difficult missions in the life of every human being…
the management of the loss of a parent. The first Christmas without her dad, she isn’t very bright. But, somehow, someday, you have to make peace and move on.
“The first Christmas without my dad”
“What does it mean “The first Christmas without a so-and-So’s”? Because, I mean, Christmas make us miss those who are missing more than a any period of time? My old one looked completely stupid the correlation Christmas-love-happy-family. And now, in the year of our lord 2016, I look like a fool the chair that my dad used to sit, oblivious to anyone else’s Christmas, and I miss him even more.
All the years before the year that we might as well call it “The year μπανοβγαίναμε in hospitals”, such about days I was trying to fit you in somewhere of my own to not grumble. “I’ll come by and eat, but for a little while”, “Christmas will come, but new Year’s eve don’t wait for me” and stuff like that in the realm of loss seem monstrous and filled with the darkest guilt, but it is absolutely normal.
Every year that came after when I was growing up, on holidays, we shared with dad snide comments about the excessive enthusiasm in the world, and the frantic consumerism of the holiday season. We had exactly the same taste in food and we face the same common dishes. We laughed at the same jokes we did last year, we were fighting for the same and the same reasons (why, as in every Greek family, if you don’t shut your eyes at the family table “festive days” then when?). And then I was leaving. Because I had work to do.
Which I thought most important.
And this year, dad isn’t here, can’t miss it. You can’t not write a letter that will never reach anywhere (and so it’s a stupid letter) that I’d like to be here.
Why, when the separation is definitive, put in front of whatever tool you have to αυτομαστιγωθείς not you were a good daughter, that you didn’t notice, didn’t care, didn’t help, didn’t you hear, didn’t love as you ought, and such as have loved you.
Why, when the separation is definitive, do you love as you never loved. Why then is it that all the good, sweet, tender, growing and making bad short and you always end up missing it all –from the really good jokes and bright mind, as the awful shoes that σταύρωνες to fly at last.
And all you want is what we all say and sing and write. A last “good-bye”, a time to say what you have in your head, like a declaration of love –to say “thank you” decent, “I’m sorry” a decent and a sincere “I forgive you”.
I wish you were here, dad, and let me say for the thousandth time the story of the Junta. I won’t στραβοκοιτούσα.
If you were this year, here in the new Year, I promise, that I wouldn’t leave at 12.05.
And, I promise, I won’t argue, not even a teensy time you smoke.
After all of your head do. Enjoy it.”
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