There was no 'Cheers'

So another Christmas has passed - the second since Dad died. In many ways it was very typical Christmas – up until I returned to Wanganui.

We dropped in on a few rellies on the way up – had the photo calls and many of the other things that are synonymous with our fairly traditional family Christmas. Then we were off to Wanganui for Christmas dinner at M&F’s family pad. Cool.

Our old neighbour was nice enough to lend us her house to stay in whist she was away – so that was the accommodation sorted. That’s when it got weird. It was the first time I had driven to Wanganui and not had a family home to go to. This time I wasn’t going to drive up the drive – honk twice – to be greeted by Mum at the door, Dad just making his way out of the living room behind her as I walked in.

Instead I drove up the next door drive way, got out of the car and looked down on the two houses where I had sent most of my life. One of them ‘the house that Mum and Dad built’, and Mum and I sold. It just seemed wrong.

I looked at the new owners having drinks on ‘our deck’, playing games on ‘our lawn’ – and to be honest I went between jealousy and anger. It was nothing at all to do with them (they are very nice), it was more the fact that they looked like they were having ‘the perfect’ family Christmas. And I wasn’t.

For the rest of the night at M&F’s do I reverted to the standard Modus Operandi when I feel this way – looking after the kids. I was not much in the mood for the traditional boozy session, there were no speeches to drink to after all – we always did speeches – lots of them.

I don’t mean this to be particularly melancholy, or even to sound as though it is coming from the keyboard of someone in a wildly depressed chapter. It is just that coming back to Wanganui and looking down on ‘my home’ from a distance has thrown me a bit.

People say that Christmas is always one of the hardest times when you have lost someone close, that it embodies so much of the family spirit (certainly true in my case). But when I look at the family I still have, the recent additions to it, and the extended family we have adopted – and that have adopted us as theirs, I know I am incredibly lucky.

But there is still a massive hole, and, in a strange kind of way, seeing that house was like I was looking right at it.