December is the month of anticipation. About Christmas and trees and presents. About taking time to recharge. About the birth of Jesus. About the coming new year.

My anticipation has been different this season. Is that something that changes for all of us as we get older? I’m not *not* looking forward to the holidays, but I also haven’t been eagerly anticipating them. I’ve been doing all the stuff, but just feeling blah about the season I guess.

I diagnosed myself with election hangover. Until Black Friday to, when I caught the scent of the aftershave my Dad wore. I turned to see an older man. A veteran wearing a hat. My whole body felt weightless for a second and then I got a rush that made me very hot. No more Christmases with my Dad. Ever. And then the words of one of my favorite people came back to me: the second year is harder than the first.

When I was a teenager my Dad taught me to start each day with prayer and speaking scripture, way before positive affirmations were a thing. One of the things I have said out loud at the beginning of each day for over 30 years is “I expect great things today.” But over time I’ve just recited those words without really thinking about them anymore. Without expecting them to really mean or do anything.

So I started making a concerted effort to once again believe what I say: I expect great things today. Some days it works and some days I cannot find the presents I hid from the girls (in anticipation I would remember where I put them). The shift it brings is not that every one of my days is rosy, but that when I have a moment where I feel loss it pretty quickly turns to a picture I have in my head of my Dad laughing.

Laughing with delight. At the girls and their shenanigans. At what he would call my payback. At the number of shoes three girls own. At my annual destruction of a pair of overpriced sunglasses.

Over the weekend I went to see my Dad’s grave. I don’t normally do that because he asked us not to, but I really wanted to see the cemetery with the Christmas wreaths and I really wanted to see if it would bring some sort of peace.

As I prayed the Lord’s Prayer next to a stranger, also visiting a loved one and whose church service broadcast was coming through on her phone, I remembered all the times my Dad tucked us in and we said that prayer together. And the truth of Clare Harner’s words washed over me: he did not die. He still lives. In this world through all of the good things he planted in us, and in the next where there is no night.

This week has been filled with anticipation and Christmas spirit. Cards, decorations, goodies and stockings, including for the kitten I told Ella not to get but that she got anyway and who now sleeps on my desk when I work.

I expect good things…and that Ella’s kitten is now going to live in my house forever.