I lost my father-in-law during the advent season in 2023. His absence from our life is still poignant. There are times when my husband and I look at one another and say “I wish Ron was still alive.” A man like my father-in-law leaves a huge hole when he is gone, one that is hard to smooth over, like the places across the Western Front of the First World War, where even now, a century later, you can still see the old lines of the trenches and the where the shells fell. And so this advent, as I think of hope, peace, joy and love, I can’t help put them beside grief. Grief, after all, is just love with nowhere to go.

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They will tell you that it will never hurt less

It will only hurt less often.

That one day you will stop seeing them everywhere

And your life will grow bigger around the hole they left

So that the hole will seem smaller

Less maw-like when it yawns at unexpected times.

And perhaps they are correct

The well wishers who have no clue

And the travelled stained who already walked the road

And your own mother who still keeps living

Despite not having her mother for the last two decades.

Yes, it will hurt less often

But when it hurts it will still come like a fire

All the love you have and all the words still left to say

Stuck in your throat

Like petals on the breeze

Wondrous blossoms that fell apart and now

Have no place to go

Except to the earth that holds what is left

Of the ones we still love.