The Christmas Light I Still Look For

Nanay,

The holidays are folding themselves into the days again, the way they always do. Lights go up. Music drifts through stores. People move quickly toward celebration. And yet, this year, I feel outside of it, as though the season is happening behind glass.

Everyone talks about the Christmas spirit as if it is something you can simply step into. For me, it lived in you. You were the warmth that made the house feel whole. The way your laugh filled the quiet. The way you moved through December as if you carried your own constellation. Without you, the season feels dimmer, like someone turned the volume down on the world.

I keep longing for the feeling I had when you were here. Not the gifts. Not the gatherings. What I miss is that steady, familiar glow you brought to all of us. You were the spirit. The center. The one who made everything soft enough to breathe in. Even now, with colder days arriving and lights returning to windows, I am still learning how to walk through this season without you.

But I am writing to you, Nanay, because longing can carry its own kind of light. Maybe this year, my way of feeling Christmas is not by trying to force joy too quickly, but by letting myself miss you honestly. By letting memory be part of the season too.

Grief changes the shape of the holidays. It teaches you that love does not disappear just because someone is no longer physically here. It lingers in rituals, in familiar songs, in the way light gathers in a room at night. It stays in the small things. The quiet things. The things other people may not notice.

So this Christmas, I will meet you there. In memory. In love. In the ache. In the light that still reaches me.

May we meet again, Nanay ko. Someday, I will see you again for the first time, in every lifetime. I will wander off to distant places just to find you once again. In the clouds, I will see you.

I miss you. I love you. Beyond measure.