{by Amy Turn Sharp from doobleh-vay}

This year is different. Each year as we turn around the sun and land smack into a new holiday everything is really relative to the places we have just come from.
My husband lost his father this summer.
Thick in the summer morning heat at the end of July I got a phone call quiet from England.
Joe’s sweet sister shaky with tears told me that dad had died.
I wrote about telling Joe this news:

You never write the narrative of yr own sadness until the moment it happens.

Joe’s father died last night.

It’s like there is a giant hole in England now
in his town
in Joe’s heart

And when I had to put my arms around him
to hold him and tell him
it was like he wasn’t all there
like he had shrunk to the size of a boy
and even my strong strong arms
wrapped right around him
couldn’t do enough

It has marked me. Like tracks we all have across our souls from the biggest imprints of our lives.
From horrible events to the most exquisite blissful times we have ever known and not the little in between.
The big things that freeze a life and spin it.
It’s not like anyone can see them, but we know they are there.
We can feel them like tiny scars if we hold ourselves still.

Life is constant change and flux, but the holidays seem to stop us in our tracks and make us think harder and reflect a little longer on the life we live. We think more deliberately about family and friends and the world and peace and hope. We make lists- gentle reminders of the folks that matter to us. We reach out and become “better angels of our nature” if only for a few weeks of the year.

One of Joe’s sisters and her family will walk onto a shiny plane this weekend and fly across the ocean to land in Ohio where they will spend the first Christmas without dad. Life has not been like this before as the subtraction of love is clearly hanging in the air. They are so excited to be together but there is much work to be done to process and deal with the things that have happened since last Christmas. Joe’s baby sister lives here now too and she is hanging with desperate need to see her sister and make this time feel better. To make this time feel like home.

Hope is a belief in a positive outcome and the holidays seem to make that thought process shimmer and shine for me.
I can see it in the way my children drop their mouths open at holiday lights on dark drives or how I feel nostalgic for my childhood or for the smell of my Gran’s kitchen. Joe and I always nod our heads each December now for over a decade and tell each other everything is fine, that the new year will be better than the last. We give more than we have and just believe it will balance out.
We find eyes wet with tears from the archival memories of our childhood. We just fill ourselves up.

We are “in hope” at the holidays, much like people are “in love.”
We all want to make time stop.
We all want to stitch up the year and know it was ours and it was real.
I have hope for my family and for the world this year.
I still see a Renaissance of Lovely about to happen in this world.
I will not make empty promises to myself in forms of resolutions, but instead I will try and reach out more.
Love more. Hope more. Not turn my back. Not forget to remember. Befriend my familiar strangers. Stand up more. Let it shine.

And on this upcoming Christmas day my biggest hope is that dad can find his eyes upon us from the great beyond.
He can see the children of his body walking the earth and spreading his great kindness to others.
He will see that each life when filled with love and hope can burn brighter than fire.
And even in the dark we can find each other with our light.

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Amy Turn Sharp is the writer behind doobleh-vay, a personal blog filled with her unique style of writing and photography. She is a true artist, a wife, a mother,and a small business owner, selling and making handcrafted wooden toys. Subscribe to her blog and experience her poetry, short stories, and personal recollections. You can also follow her on Twitter.

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Loads of Hope for the Holidays

Please join us at Blog Nosh Magazine as we share stories of hope this holiday season in support of the Tide Loads of Hope program, a mobile laundromat offering laundry services to families affected by disasters.

Share your own stories of hope, along with Blog Nosh Magazine, Velveteen Mind, and a gathering of inspiring bloggers, and enter your own post link in the blog carnival below. Explore featured bloggers as well as three featured posts selected from carnival participants listed in the linky (that could be you!).

Lend your voices now, then participate live during a two day event in New Orleans, Sunday and Monday, December 13 and 14, as we tweet stories of resilience from laundry recipients and volunteers on the ground. Follow along on twitter via #loadsofhope and be sure to follow @TideLoadsofHope.

Learn more about how you can extend hope to families affected by disasters by visiting http://tideloadsofhope.com

Blog carnival hosted by Blog Nosh Magazine, sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope.

How do the holidays fill you with loads of hope?