A Timber Tom-n't Christmas

This is the second Christmas that I spent without my dad, and it was A LOT harder than the first. The first Christmas I was more "in shock" so to speak, like the whole concept of my dad not being there was so foreign that I literally half expected him to show up and say "sorry I'm late, my truck wouldn't start" or something like that. The second Christmas, however, was a lot different. It was really hard to care about Christmas. I had all of these fun memories of when me and mom and dad would do all of the gifts all wrapped all nice and pretty, how I would play games in my room on my Xbox and my dad would yell "I need a finger in here" and I would put down my game and sprint into the dining room to put my finger on the spot where he would tie the ribbon around the present to get it nice and tight. Looking back, he definitely didn't need me as it is quite easy to do by yourself, but he wanted to keep the tradition alive.

The part that I didn't really realize at the time was that I really started losing a lot of the Christmas spirit after my parents got divorced, and that is really one of the only things that I noticed was different (looking back at it). The lack of my mom being around meant my dad still did Christmas but spent a lot less effort decorating (we basically only did the tree and lights), and then when my dad moved out and my mom moved in, we basically only did decor and the tree was a lot more of a "throw it up as quick as possible" situation. Gone were the days of really all gathering together with Christmas music and putting up the ornaments, dad drinking a lil too much and gettin funny, mom spending like 20 minutes pinning all of the cards to the wall, me "fluffing the tree", and basically everything family oriented besides the giving and opening presents.

Side Note

When I was a kid, my dad's way of giving me a hard time around the holidays (or just trying to get me to participate, not sure) was to make me "fluff the tree". We had an artificial tree once we moved to AZ, and, in order to make it look more realistic, he would have me take the "sub branches" and spread them out to try and make it appear more full. After this took place for like 25 minutes it was finally done, and then he would say "oh, you missed a spot!" for another 25 minutes. It was a lot of fun.

I spent this whole Christmas half thankful for what I still have and half extremely bitter and upset about what was taken from me. No one expects your old man to be around forever, but you also don't expect to lose him when you're so young that you don't get to truly experience what it is like to have your parents into their older age. A lot of the wisdom they pass down is fleeting, and occurs seemingly out of nowhere or directly in context of something else going on. I really noticed this a lot this Christmas, where dad would always tell me stories about what Christmas was like at his house. I always listened and tried to retain it the best I could, but I really always lost it in the end, except for the concept of how he lived a fairly "typical" 50s-70s childhood in his Christmastime.

I would love to say "I wish I payed more attention", which is true for nearly everything my dad ever told me, but in this case I really think it is just a matter of forgetting rather than not paying attention in the first place. All in all, I really miss the ol guy, and I really don't think Christmas will ever be the same. The closest I think I'll ever get is when hopefully one day I get to share Christmas with children of my own, but at the same time, I will just be a shallow imitation of the great man that Timber Tom was.

I truly feel for all of the people that never had their own 'Timber Tom' in their lives, because I wouldn't be half the person I am without him.