I haven't really been able to celebrate Christmas this year. Or last year. Or the year before that. The year before that was my father's last Christmas. He spent it in a hospital bed that had been placed in his living room. It gave me horrid flashbacks to when I was eleven and we all thought he was going to die - he was in a hospital bed in the middle of our living room then, too, after throwing out his back and developing a blood clot in his lung that nearly killed him.

My father was the center of our holiday that year, four years ago. But then, he was the center of that holiday every year. He made our Christmases what they were. And I need to express that, to work through it, somewhere where I think people will understand, because even I don't really understand it yet.