Four Christmases Later
There’s a quiet kind of shame that comes with feeling something years later. Not sadness exactly. Not longing. Just the sudden awareness that someone who once defined your holidays exists entirely outside your life now.
This was my fourth Christmas without him. And Christmas Eve passed almost unnoticed. No ache. No heaviness. No replaying traditions. At one point I realized I hadn’t even remembered that we used to watch It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas Eve. That surprised me more than it hurt.
For a long time, I thought forgetting would feel like loss. Instead, it felt neutral. Quiet. Almost ordinary.
Looking back, I think one of my biggest mistakes was not treating the ending like a death. I told myself it was just a divorce. That people move on. That I should too. But there’s something uniquely disorienting about being completely replaced. About watching a life you shared continue without you, as if you were edited out rather than mourned.
The first year was the hardest. That Christmas, “Hard Candy Christmas” hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember feeling blindsided by how deep the grief still ran, even when I thought I was functioning fine. I remember thinking I was past it, only to realize I was still very much inside it.
Over time, the memories softened. Almost faded. There were moments when I could barely remember what life with him felt like at all. And then, this morning, out of nowhere, he crossed my mind. Not in a painful way. Just a quiet oh. The kind of thought that reminds you how nonlinear healing really is.
What still feels strange is the absence itself. We don’t communicate. At all. No polite holiday messages. No shared context. Just two lives that no longer overlap in any way. People often assume former spouses remain cordial, or at least capable of conversation. That hasn’t been my experience. And some days, that silence lands heavier than the breakup ever did.
I’ve learned that silence doesn’t always mean peace. Sometimes it means avoidance. Sometimes it means shame. Sometimes it simply means two people choosing very different ways of surviving the same ending.
And yet, here I am. Not waiting. Not hoping. Not reaching out. Just noticing.
If I’m honest, the feeling isn’t really about him anymore. It’s about how loss works. How it shows up years later without warning. How something that once felt permanent can fade quietly, without ceremony. How healing doesn’t always arrive as closure, but as an unremarkable morning that happens to be Christmas.
My heart goes out to anyone carrying any kind of loss this season. A person. A relationship. A version of life you thought you’d have. Whether it’s your first Christmas without them or your fourth, the timing doesn’t matter. Grief doesn’t follow calendars or traditions. It just asks to be acknowledged.
Four Christmases later, I don’t miss what we had. I don’t want contact. I don’t feel sad. I just know it mattered. And that it no longer defines my life.
Maybe that’s what moving on actually looks like.
Not forgetting. Not forgiving.
Just making space for what was, without letting it take over what is.
And I also know that my life is moving forward in a way that feels gentle and right. There is someone in my present who brings steadiness, care, and warmth into my days, and that matters to me. I’m learning how to build something new without rushing or erasing what came before. The future feels open and grounded, and that feels comforting. I’m not living in the past. I’m allowing myself to grow into what’s next.
