This Christmas, my daughter-in-law looked me directly in the eye and said with casual dismissiveness, “We’re doing Christmas at my mom’s house this year. You can just stay home.” I didn’t argue or plead or try to change her mind. I simply smiled graciously, wished them a wonderful holiday, and booked a flight to Europe.
When I posted photos from my trip online a few days later, my phone nearly exploded with notifications. Everyone kept asking the same question: Who was that distinguished-looking man sitting next to me at that candlelit restaurant in Vienna? My name is Linda Dawson, and I’m sixty-seven years old—though I’ve been told repeatedly that I look younger, which I attribute to good genes and a lifetime of staying active.
I live alone in the small but charming Colorado house my husband Paul and I bought forty years ago when we were young and optimistic and believed our love could withstand anything life threw at us. The walls are lined with photographs documenting our life together—wedding pictures, vacation snapshots, images of our son Mark growing from a chubby-cheeked baby into a serious young man. The smell of cinnamon always seems to linger in every room, especially around the holidays when I bake constantly, trying to fill the emptiness with activity and the comforting scents of my childhood.
Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, primarily because it used to bring my small family together in ways that made the house feel alive and purposeful again. My husband Paul passed away eight years ago after a brief but devastating battle with pancreatic cancer that took him from vigorous health to gone in less than six months. Since his death, my son Mark and his wife Hannah have been my only close family, my primary connection to a life that sometimes feels like it belongs to someone else, some previous version of Linda who was needed and valued and central to people’s lives.
Every Christmas for the past eight years, I would make the twenty-minute drive to Mark and Hannah’s house in the suburbs, bringing my famous pecan pie that Paul had always loved, wrapping elaborate gifts for my two grandchildren that I’d spent months selecting and preparing, and helping Hannah with decorations and cooking because she always seemed overwhelmed and I wanted to be useful, wanted to justify my presence. The holidays weren’t perfect—Hannah could be controlling about how things should be done, and Mark often seemed distracted by work even during family time—but being there made me feel like I still belonged somewhere, like I still had a role to play in someone’s story. This year, though, something felt fundamentally different from the moment fall arrived.
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