Did you really enjoy Christmas Day?

If you celebrated Christmas, did you really enjoy Christmas Day?

We are expecting a couple of very hot days - around the 40'C mark - so I was giving plants at the front of the house an extra drink very early this morning. As I did so one of the regular dog walkers went past and stopped to speak to me - or at least allow his dog to speak to me. His dog had a drink of water from the bird bath and sniffed around while his owner asked me how Christmas Day had been for us.

I knew what he meant. It was our first Christmas Day without the Senior Cat. Last year he didn't feel well enough to leave the residence to have Christmas lunch with him so we went to him. Even with Covid restrictions he would have been allowed to leave the residence for a few hours but he said "no" and told us to go off and enjoy ourselves. We tried to but it was not the same.

And this year? It was Middle Cat's turn to host the family - with some help in the cooking department from me. Middle Cat's partner picked me up mid-morning along with various food and the small presents we give one another.

"It won't be the same without Dad," he told me. He called the Senior Cat "Dad" even though he never called our mother "Mum". We headed off, unloaded the car with the things that had been kept cold in this fridge and went in to the kitchen. 

Middle Cat was there looking rather subdued. Brother Cat's family has come down with Covid so their household in another state was not even thinking about Christmas, just about getting through the day.  There would be other absences as well. One nephew was working. Another had not made the planned trip from interstate. Instead he and his partner were going through the complicated routine of entertaining his partner's elderly and disabled parents.

We set to work on the preparations that could not be done until the last minute, mostly salad making. There is no "turkey and all the trimmings" sort of meal here.  Nobody said much.

And then about midday the other members of the Greek clan started to arrive and one of them said, "The first Christmas without J... We'll miss him. He used to be such a good listener and a great story teller."

He so obviously meant it that I had to blink very hard. Then all the others began to join in, as others came they joined in the reminiscences. The "young ones", now in their twenties or early thirties all started saying "Remember when he told us about...." and "Remember when he showed you how to do that trick..." and much more.

Somehow the Senior Cat was there in among us saying, "Come on, enjoy yourselves."

And so I told the dog-walker what had happened. He bent down and gave his dog a fond scratch between the ears and said wistfully, "I'd like to be remembered that way."

So would I.