For Derek, 1979 – 2011

Every December, I bring a small plastic Christmas tree up from the basement. It’s a little wobbly with stiff branches that bend downward. It’s not fancy. It’s not curated. It’s not Instagram-perfect.

It’s my son’s remembrance tree.

I gave it to him a year before he died in 2011. When my husband and I cleaned his apartment, I found it in a box on his porch. Since then, I’ve been setting it up every year.

I didn’t know what to do with the ache in my heart on that first Christmas without him. Nothing felt right. But when I opened the boxes of ornaments, I found the ones he made in elementary school and all the ones I’d given to him over the years. I realized then that I couldn’t put them on the big tree.

So, this little tree just for him became a tradition. Every ornament I ever made for him and his grandmothers gave him since he was a baby hangs there—Baby’s First Christmas, the pepperoni pizza-loving boy, the hockey player, the Navy man. And every ornament he made with his own hands goes there too.

Each year, as I unwrap them, I feel time fold in on itself. I’m back in his presence. Grief is heavy, but memory is light, and for a moment, they meet in the middle.

People sometimes assume grief fades, as if it’s a season that eventually turns. Grief isn’t something we get over. We carry it all our lives. Traditions like this one don’t bring back what we lost, but they give us a place to put our love.

If you’ve lost someone, maybe you have your own ritual too, like lighting candle, following a recipe, or a song you play every year. Or maybe you’re still searching for something that feels right. There’s no rulebook for grieving, no correct way to remember. There’s only what feels true to you.