Christmas time is here once again. All of Park Avenue South is lit up with Christmas lights and little mini Christmas trees. Trees are being sold on every other street corner in Murray Hill and the Upper East Side. Store fronts are starting to get decked out in pine cones, wreaths, and candy canes. Some boutiques are even playing Christmas carols when you pass their windows. This time of year always makes me feel excited, but at the very same time, I always feel sad and teary, too.

People always say that holidays are supposed to be about family, but I will never have my own blood family to spend the holidays with ever again — at least, not in a meaningful way. I remember that I didn’t even spend Ed’s last Christmas with him, and every year it gets me choked up to remember how miserable he was that day when I called him to wish him a merry Christmas from the other side of the world. Being the person he was, he didn’t want to make it seem like it was a big deal, that my parents ignored the holiday altogether and ate a regular everyday meal, and our dad didn’t wish him a merry Christmas. Instead, he spoke cheerily to me about what a jet setter I was, spending Christmas in another hemisphere and country, asking me about what Chris’s family was doing for Christmas in 2012. I told him the day was already over in Melbourne and that it was already the 26th, or Boxing Day there. He seemed so surprised that I was almost 24 hours ahead of him yet speaking to him.

I try not to live a life of regrets. Regrets are so futile; they are empty feelings about things that you cannot change because those times have passed. But it’s hard not to look back and think of what I wish I had done with Ed. I can still hear his voice in my head, getting excited about buying Christmas gifts each year and watching cheesy Christmas movie reruns on TV. That’s why Christmas time is always a season I look forward to but simultaneously dread. I can’t have the joy without remembering the pain.