Christmas is a day built around gifts.
Not just the giving of them, but the proof of them. What can be held. What can be opened. What can be pointed to and named.
After loss, that framing becomes complicated.
One of the ways I make it through my days is by remembering what my children gave me. Not because it makes the loss acceptable, and not because it redeems what happened, but because I need to know their lives weren’t erased by how they ended. I need to know they still matter.
They do.
Some of what remains is tangible.
Kayla left her art. Canvases. Pieces of her that still occupy space. They exist in the world the way she once did, visibly, undeniably. I can see the marks she made. I can stand in front of them. They anchor memory in something physical. They say, without explanation, she was here.
Dustin left a child. A granddaughter whose existence continues forward, whose life carries connection in a way that is concrete and ongoing. That matters. Not as a replacement, not as consolation, but as continuation.
These tangible gifts matter because they refuse disappearance.
But they are not the only gifts.
There are also the things I can’t hold.
Ways my children shaped how I think. How I love. How I respond. How I endure. Ways they taught me patience, or strength, or humor, or caution. Ways they changed how I show up for the people still here.
My living children shaped me too. They continue to. Their influence is active, daily, evolving. It didn’t pause because others were lost. It didn’t become less important. It simply exists alongside grief, not canceled by it.
This family still exists.
These relationships still matter.
Loss did not cancel the rest.
The gifts I carry are not evenly distributed, and they don’t need to be. Each relationship left its own imprint. Each child shaped me differently. Some of those shapes are visible. Some are internal. Some are easy to name. Others I only notice when they surface in how I move through the world.
I don’t try to rank these gifts. I don’t try to make them equivalent. I don’t try to make them add up to something redemptive.
I just acknowledge them.
They are how my children remain present without being reduced to memory alone. They are how their lives continue to exert force, even now. Not as symbols, but as influence.
Christmas will always be a day of gift giving. That hasn’t changed.
What has changed is how I understand what a gift can be.
Not everything meaningful fits in wrapping paper. Not everything that matters can be handed over in a moment. Some gifts are lived into slowly, over years. Some continue long after the giver is gone.
Remembering that doesn’t erase loss.
It simply keeps their lives from being defined only by it.
