“The black one mommy! The one that goes choo choo!” She said motioning her hand to signal the lever pull of the train sound. Her eyes were filled with excitement as she shared with me the fact that the black train we include as part of our annual Christmas Village set up tradition, was her absolute favourite. She continued on about the black train and how she couldn’t wait to see it set up for Christmas this year, as the excitement in her voice and facial expressions bounced off her bedroom walls. The lines between my living child and my dead one blurred for a second (like it usually does given how much alive he is in my heart) and my mind thought about how much she would enjoy in that moment, reading the Polar Express storybook.

And there it was. The trigger. Pulled in a split second by one single thought that immediately sent me back to the first Christmas after we lost Jude. The Christmas where we spent countless numbers of hours searching for everything and anything that could possibly serve as a fitting gift to sit under our Christmas tree for Jude. The gift that we knew would be wrapped by us, and opened by us, alone. The gift that we placed all of our hope on healing our broken hearts and help us get through the holiday season. The gift that would fill the void. We finally landed on one – the special edition of The Polar Express storybook.

As the grief slowly seeped through the crevices of my heart, it was swept up by the current of my daughter’s excitement of her new found awareness that Christmas was on the horizon, and splattered all over the room. With very little white space left in my heart to distinguish between grief and joy, I found myself breaking my own rule and asking her, “ Would you like to read a story about a Christmas train? We can borrow one of Jude’s special books to read tonight”. She immediately said yes and hopped her way over to the space in our home that we reference as Jude’s room, where a library of story books belonging to Jude are kept.

That blended current of joy and grief bouncing around in the walls of my heart is what I need to prepare myself for, get comfortable with and accept to be my reality for the next 2 months. To a bereaved parent, the Holiday Season approaches like a freight black train. We can see it coming. We know it’s beautiful. We know it’s grand. We know it’s magical. But when it finally get’s close enough for us to see inside and notice the one single empty passenger seat, the speed at which it hits your heart is enough to kill you all over again, and again, and again….

So be gentle. Be accepting. Be open. And even be ok with not wanting to participate in anything that is brought on by the black train. Your heart will tell you what it needs to be able to survive the impact.