Why I’m Buying My [Dead] Sister a Christmas Gift
Yesterday, I sat in my driveway with tears welling in my eyes. A weight pressed against my chest, and I thought about every phone call I never made to my sister. Every moment I wasn’t there for her. Everything I wish I had done, given, or been.
Moments earlier, while driving home from the gym, I was running through the list of people I needed to buy gifts for. My mind drifted back to Christmases in the early 2010s, before she went “downhill.”
Before I lost her. Really lost her.
I think about Melissa every day, but the holidays catapult me back to our childhood and youth. The warmth and joy of those memories stirs an unease in me. The finality of her death is hard to ignore.
I always put Melissa at the top of my Christmas shopping list. I didn’t have much then — low-paying work during and after college — but I still had more than she did. And in the self-serving way gift-giving gives us a sense of fulfillment, I felt a warmth each time I bought her something.
It wasn’t hard to shop for her. We liked similar brands, activities, and often found ourselves buying the same things unintentionally. Maybe it was a sister thing, or maybe we influenced each other without realizing it. So when I did my Christmas shopping, all I’d do was pick something I loved, and give it to her.
Buying Christmas gifts for Melissa wasn’t about the consumerism, or even “gift giving as a love language.” I didn’t buy her gifts to tell her I loved her. I bought them to say, “I see you,” and, “I understand you.”
Love is easy to come by. Being seen, really seen, is rare and runs deeper. Most of us crave the feeling of someone else holding up a mirror against us, more than we crave the somewhat superficial feeling of love.
Or maybe that’s what love is.
I like to think that on Christmas morning, when we exchanged gifts, I could reflect a piece of herself back on her. To show her she was just like me. Valued. That she was worthy. Understood.
That she was enough.
As I walked up to my house yesterday, my mind shifted to the years she was most absent from my life. How the Christmases of our past had become memories. My chest tightened, and I thought about what I would have bought her this year. The Christmases I thought I’d share with her, the ones that will never come.
You’ll hear me say this often: we don’t grieve because the person is no longer here. For many of us, it has less to do with their absence in the present moment. We grieve the future — the life we could have had with them if we had a little more time.
And then time carries us forward, and they aren’t there. The future becomes the wound. Each step we take into it is marked by their absence.
This week, I felt a deep grief for Christmases past, but also for the ones that will never arrive. I grieve the Christmas shopping I can’t do for my sister. Since her death, every milestone has been a reminder of what isn’t, and what won’t be.
That’s the hardest part of grief.
Gift-giving gets criticized for its consumerism, yet in reality, it’s much more than that.
When I think about what giving my sister a gift meant, it wasn’t about the money. It was about connection. It was a way to tell her I loved her, that I understood her, that we were bonded.
I like to think she’s still alive somewhere, somehow. Maybe not physically, but in a way that still matters. And maybe I should still shop for her. Consider what she’d love. What would make her happy. Give myself the gift of picking something out for her.
It may sound silly, even a little strange, to choose a gift for someone who’s gone. But it’s a way to connect when the person is no longer here. To remember what they enjoyed and what lit them up. Maybe that’s its own kind of healing.
As I sit here with my cup of coffee, I can see my sister leaning on my parents’ counter, hunched over her laptop. I can hear her drawl of a laugh — the same one I catch myself doing sometimes.
I wonder what she would have wanted for Christmas this year. How she’d feel opening a gift from me. What it would be like to wake up one more time in our parents’ house on Christmas morning. Stockings. Wrapped boxes. Puff pancake. The parade humming in the background.
This season, when I catch myself grumbling about spending money on gifts, I’ll try to pause. I’ll remind myself it isn’t about buying. It isn’t about the thing. It’s an expression of what someone means to me. A way of saying, “You are seen. You are loved.”
This weekend, I’ll pick out her gift. I’ll wrap it in the cute, gingerbread wrapping paper. The good, thick stuff. I’ll place the gift under my tree. Waiting for her. I already know it will make her smile.
On Christmas, I’ll find a way to feel close to her, even when I’m not sure where she went, why she went, or why she’s no longer here.
What a gift it is to give a gift.
If this resonated with you, and you’re missing someone, let me know in the comments how you handle grief and gift-giving around the holidays.
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