My Isaiah Joseph,

Merry Christmas Eve, sweetie. It’s 9:03am right now, I think today is going to be a letter written throughout the day. Your brothers have been up since 4am. They’re a little too excited for Christmas. They claim that they’ll be all going to bed at 9pm, but I don’t know if your brothers will even make it to that time.

I don’t really want to just sit in this feeling today. It’s uncomfortable. I’m quietly crying, while simultaneously trying to act like everything is okay. It is like I’m trying to break apart the huge breakdown into a small one that just lasts the entire day. I don’t know what the plans are for today. Aunt Nay Nay bought us a cookie decorating kit so we are going to do that a little later today. I also want to go to the beach for just a little today. Our one tradition we had in Hawaii was the Aweoweo on Christmas Eve. It’s our last Christmas here, so I want to keep that tradition. I suggested that maybe we just have a bunch of random appetizers tonight because it’s just easier. I don’t want to cook.

I’ve always loved Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day. Christmas Eve was filled with all the excitement and anticipation of the next morning, while it seemed like Christmas morning was over and that was it. We always used to go over my grandma’s house for Christmas Eve. I loved it. All of Gmas side of the family would get together, we would exchange gifts, do a tea count, and imagine ourselves living in the Christmas village set up under the tree. Grandma always had a nice Christmas Eve layout with meats, fish, her famous buckeyes, and even the smelts. She had a Christmas wreath on her downstairs door that played music every time you opened or closed the door and one year she got a dancing Santa. She loved that thing. My grandpa had passed away at that house in his room years earlier. One year we had remote control cars upstairs and they were moving by themselves. We were convinced that it was grandpap and he was trying to contact us. After we left my grandma’s, we drove around to see Christmas lights, and then went to midnight mass.

We went to the beach today, but not Aweoweo. Instead, we went to Mokuleia because it’s usually a little quieter. Your siblings went in the water and “surfed” down the sand on their boogie boards. I found quite a bit of sea glass, two of which were dark blue.

We drove around to look at Christmas lights, as always. Daddy brought your urn so you could be with us. Elijah complained that he was tired most of the time and Ellie asked quite a few times if we could be done and go home. We probably went around to look at Christmas lights over a hundred times in your life, but the ones I kept thinking about were the Christmas Eve when we just moved to Virginia and in Missouri when we would go each week after Ellie’s dance. You guys all wore your matching pajamas in Virginia, we took daddy’s truck, and it wasn’t really cold outside. In Missouri, you appreciated any lights that people put out. We would drive past a house with a single string of lights on a banister and you would comment about how great it looked.

The excitement tonight is absent from the house. Usually you’re running around and telling everyone they need to go to sleep. According to my post four years ago, you were all voluntarily in bed by 7:25pm.

I wonder if this is how Christmas will be for the rest of my life. Will it ever get a little of that “spark” back? I really did not care at all about today and that sounds horrible. I have three other children to make this day special for, but I just want it end as quickly as possible. If it weren’t for your siblings, I wouldn’t even celebrate this year. I called Gma for a minute today just to tell her not to expect to talk to me because I don’t really want to talk to anyone.

I hope you were with us at some point today. Maybe at the beach? Maybe while we drove around to look at lights? Maybe while your siblings exchanged their gifts? I hope you were there for something. At the beach I was looking out into the ocean and had this desire to just scream your name. I didn’t, but maybe it’s because you were there with me.

If I could pick a time to just not exist, it would be now. I want to go to sleep and skip everything. Please visit us tonight. Isaiah, I’m in desperate need of something from you.

I love you more than anything, baby. Goodnight, sweet dreams, and Merry Christmas. My one Christmas wish would be that losing you was not my reality.