the forever Christmas card

Earlier this month when I brought out Christmas decorations for the house, I found a large envelope with old Christmas cards. They were mostly cards David had given me and our daughters for Christmas a few years ago.

The card that struck the most emotion was the card he got for the girls. The message was beautiful but most of all, he dated it “25 Dec Forever” as pictured above. This brought me some sense of joy even in my sadness because one of my biggest regrets is not coming to terms with the fact that David would died prematurely from cancer. I think that if I had come to terms with it, it would have allowed him to better prepare and leave messages, cards, or notes for our daughters.

The card was written in the earlier stages of the disease and I am thankful that I did not notice it then. At that time, I would have been upset that he would date a card as such and I would even have tried to make him edit it and said something like why are you preparing like you are not going to be around to watch them grow up

The card had a beautiful message and advice to the girls on growing up and finding their path to happiness, wisdom, and success and ended with a final message that “but there’s is one gift I can give you this Christmas that will always be with you – and that’s the love of a proud parent’s heart”.

This message resonates a lot. He loves his daughters with no bounds. They know it, they miss it, it makes it his absence even more difficult to bear. Yet, it is all we have to sustain us and that love will go on in our hearts forever.