Just last week a close friend of my family lost a courageous battle with cancer. You know those aunts and uncles who technically are not your aunts and uncles, but who might as well be based on the amount of positive influence and love they bring to your life? Yeah, that's who this person was to me. Thinking back on my childhood, I have so many memories that involve this person and her husband. Unfortunately as I grew older, however, I started to see these two people less and less until I was only seeing them a few times a year at most.

Regardless of this fact, however, this person and her husband always made a point to show me and my sister that they were thinking of us. Every single year since my first Christmas, I always received a Precious Moments ornament from them, and once my sister was born, she received the same. Every year around Christmas time, they would deliver two small rectangular boxes, neatly wrapped in festive wrapping paper to my family's house. From a very young age, my sister and I became so familiar with these boxes that we were really never surprised at what lay hidden under the strips of red and green wrapping paper, and eventually, we accumulated so many of these ornaments that we each needed to buy a little four-foot-tall Christmas tree of our own to display our Precious Moments ornaments because our family Christmas tree simply did not have enough room for them all.

Last Friday was when I heard the news that Heaven gained another angel, and I knew instantly that my heart would be heavy when I would go to decorate my tiny Christmas tree back at home. When I finally arrived home for break, my eyes were quickly welled up with tears when I walked into the house, looked at the kitchen table, and saw two small, neatly wrapped rectangular boxes that must have been bought and wrapped weeks ahead of time. I couldn't believe it. With my eyes still full of tears, I went up to my room and began the process of decorating my little tree. With each ornament I hung, I thought about my Christmas angel and of all the times she went out of her way to show that I was in her thoughts, even up until her final days on this Earth, regardless of the fact that we only saw each other once or twice a year. She was something special, and I picture her looking down on us.

Unfortunately, everyone has to deal with the loss of loved ones at some point or another, and the holidays especially can be a very difficult time to be dealing with this type of situation. It's been almost four years since my grandfather passed away, and yet I still find myself accidentally looking for him when I walk into my family's Christmas party on Christmas Day. Sometimes, you really just cannot imagine a holiday or life without someone, until all of the sudden you have to accept that they are not there. It's hard, and it hurts... a lot. But that's okay. Grieving is okay. Even not being okay is okay. You just have to accept what life throws at you, and really appreciate what you had, and all that you still do have. Although physically these people may not be with you, they live on in your memory. Love and memory are eternal.