The holidays used to feel like a soft-lit snow globe. They’re shaken just enough to let the glitter fall, glowing just enough to make the cold feel warm. But this year, I found myself standing outside the glass. A quiet exile. A stranger to my own traditions.
My aunt died on Thanksgiving. The sentence still feels foreign in my mouth, like something borrowed from someone else’s grief. She was the aunt who was late to everything: every holiday, every birthday, and even things hosted at her own house.
She’d drift in with a half-guilty, half-amused smile that she’d wear like a signature. Tardiness was simply her way of making an entrance. And once she stepped inside, she filled the air with those gentle little jokes that weren’t flashy or loud. But somehow, they always made our days brighter.
She adored her grandchildren, her nieces, her nephews, and everyone in between. She adored her family with her entire being. She didn’t always have to say it—we felt it in the way she showed up, arms already open, love spilling out in a way that didn’t need words.
And then there was my grandma, who died on Dec. 28, 2021—a date that sits in the corner of every winter, waiting. She was the glue that held us together, the unseen stitching that kept everyone from unraveling.
Holidays were her gift. They seemed to bloom from her hands: warmth, food, laughter, the kind of quiet magic only grandmothers carry without ever announcing they’re doing it. And just when I was finally getting close to her—close in that tender, grown-up way where you realize your grandmother isn’t just a guardian but a person you want to know deeply—she was gone.
Losing her felt like reaching for something that vanished mid-step. Like I had just touched the edge of something soft before it dissolved. She loved each of us in our own individual way.
And my grandpa—he didn’t die on a holiday, but Feb. 4, 2019, still threads itself through this season. He was my rock throughout childhood, the steady presence that kept everything from feeling too big or too sharp. There was a calmness in him that steadied me without my ever noticing it.
When he died, I didn’t understand it, and maybe I still don’t. His absence feels different. Quieter, deeper, almost like a secret that the world keeps reminding me of around the holidays. Even without a date tied to a celebration, his missing chair at the table glows in its own way.
All of it—their lives, their losses—feels heavier during the months when the world insists on joy.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t see any family on Thanksgiving this year. I told people it was just “easier” that way. That travelling was too chaotic. That I needed time to myself. But the truth was much simpler and far less pretty: I didn’t know how to sit in a room where someone was missing. I didn’t know how to look at everyone else’s grief and see my own reflected back.
Don’t get me wrong, I have friends—good, solid friends who would pick up the phone at any hour. Friends who’d drop everything if I whispered that I needed them. And still, reaching out felt impossible.
It felt like placing my storm in the middle of their clear sky. Like asking for comfort meant taking something from them instead of finding warmth. I hate that I feel that way. I hate that I can’t see myself that way they do.
But the truth is that grief makes you believe you’re too heavy to hold, even when people have already stretched out their hands.
That’s the part of holidays I hate the most. Not the decorations or the carols, but the way grief turns them into measuring sticks. This is what you had. This is what you lost. This is who isn’t here anymore.
Someday, maybe December won’t feel like a bruise I keep pressing just to check whether it still aches. Maybe I’ll be able to build new traditions without feeling like I’m betraying the ones shaped by the people I’ve lost. And maybe someday, I’ll actually be able to laugh without tasting guilt.
But I’m not there yet. I’m still the girl who steps into each holiday with a quiet flinch, waiting for the memories to rise like unwelcome tides. Right now, all I can do is tell the truth: the holidays hurt.
They hurt because they were once beautiful. They hurt because the people who made them sparkle aren’t here to nudge me towards dessert or tease me across the room. They hurt because love leaves echoes, and mine are loudest in November and December. Some days, I feel made entirely of echoes.
I used to think I had to fix the holidays, make them bright again, before I could claim adulthood or healing. But I don’t think that anymore. Some seasons stay complicated. Some dates stay tender. And that doesn’t mean I’m broken—it just means I remember.