My sweet daughter wrote this poem for my father this year for Christmas.  It was our first Christmas without Marty, but we’ve also said goodbye to other family members in the past.

We played Bingo at my aunt and uncle’s house with my grandmother’s old bingo set.  We reminisced about when we used to all gather around on Christmas day and play Trivial Pursuit, and how my other grandmother would just blurt out answers for the opposing team.

I told my wife the story of how one Christmas eve at the Widick house.  My mom’s parents would stay with us in their later years on Christmas eve.  My grandfather couldn’t walk without shuffling his feet.  He never picked them up, he just sort of scooted around like Tim Conway would do in his old man comedy sketches.

My parents gave them their bed downstairs, and one year – my grandmother kept yelling at the top of her lungs to my grandfather “Quit shuffling your feet!  You’re going to wake up the whole house!!”  All the while, we never heard his feet, but we certainly heard her!

People will come and go in your life.  Family members pass on.  But the memories of the holiday seasons past stay with us.