Every year, I received a Christmas card from a certain someone. He ran a family business and, while mailing cards to clients, he included me. He continued the ritual even after we were no longer together but remained friends, and I often wondered when it might end.
In 2006, no card arrived. I reached out and learned it had been addressed to the wrong house number. I never checked with my neighbour, because the card itself was unimportant; It was enough for me to know it had been sent; that knowledge alone delivered contentment.
Christmas is three days away. I still hope for a card, though I no longer expect one. Distance weakens habits, and with it, friendships fade.
Time, unstoppable and irreversible, has a way of healing wounds. I once kept every journal, every letter, every email, every playful note. Good memories linger like the scent of baked cookies after a party. They are sweet, yet heavy, sometimes more so than the bad. Time preserves them, yet it also weighs them down, like a keepsake box you hesitate to open but can never bring yourself to throw away.
What strikes me is that I do not feel this way about past partners. I never miss them. It is old friends I grieve for. When I think of them, I feel a sharp ache in my chest, a sinking weight that pulls me under the tide of nostalgia. Forgetting is only hard when you resist it. The emptiness rises and falls, and in its rhythm I learn to mourn what is gone, broken friendships and dead links in my life, until they finally rest in peace.
Perhaps that is what time truly does. It does not erase, but reshapes. It teaches us that even rituals end, friendships close, and traditions fade. Yet it also leaves behind the faint imprint of what once was, enough to remind us every December that we once mattered to someone, and they once mattered to us.
