As we creep toward Christmas, I have no wish for Michael Buble or anyone’s greatest holiday hits, but I do think that some boys’ choir solemnity along with an organ and some strings is in order. That’s my preferred seasonal ‘cheer,’ anyway. If you know me, my musical preferences veer toward sad violins, choral music, and melancholy jazz. My playlists aren’t a match for most.

Emily always felt we did too much for her at Christmas and for her birthdays. She didn’t like too much acknowledgement, which is why all the hoopla around her death would have been excruciatingly embarrassing for her in the earthly realm. She would have downright despised it! My sense is that in her pure positive energy form she has rather enjoyed the outpouring of love for her and us, our family. I’d dare say she would thank you, if she could.

This whole idea of inhabiting another realm – in whatever form one chooses to believe – is quite comforting, and I’d like to believe it is not a crutch we humans make up, but an unempirical, but absolute reality that exists beyond our earthly comprehension. Faith is a word, when brought up in the context of religions, that I am not a fan of. But I’ve always had faith that there is more than what the eye can see, that death is not eternal sleep, but a portal to a kind of peace that is inscrutable to us. 

Today, I choose to believe that my Emily is both at peace and is somehow among us. I crave her earthly body: her strong shoulders, her crinkly, smiling eyes, her delicate, long fingers that played the violin with such beauty, her slight slouch as she sloped along in her jeans, plaid shirts and Doc Martens, and how she would always turn around and wait for me when I was limping just behind the rest of us. I want to massage her scaly dry calves with lotion, and watch multiple episodes of Brooklyn 99 with her: I want to go out for coffee and study together in companionable silence, and have that frequent nugget of her letting me in by telling me a story or asking for advice; I want another time with her at the cat cafe, where she was so serenely delighted; and I want to hear her sweetly lilting voice, “Come on, Moon,” and the gentle tapping of her thighs as she called her Moondog for her evening walk; I want to run into her on the campus that we shared and hear her say, “Hi, mom,” being both slightly embarrassed and happy to run into me all at the same time.

I so badly want her physical presence, as I lie here in Vancouver, a city I am so intimately familiar with, but feels so empty without her. I want you, my Emily. 

But I will let you fly under the radar, dear girl, as you chose to do in life – so deep, so clever, so artistic, so musical, so physically gifted, so philosophical, so full of fun and playfulness, so imaginative, so driven, so observant and precise, so full of compassion for people – yet only showing your true self on your own terms. You were always a mystery and will continue to be one, dearest of Emilies. 

So, I will look for your spirit in the subtleties and nuances of what I read, how you bring out the beauty and value of what I write with an ease I don’t always possess, and in what I see and hear and smell and taste that reminds me poignantly of you. 

I will never stop looking, Emily, and I expect you to find ways to crack through that heavenly realm and make yourself known to me, your beloved Daddy, your sister, your friends, and all the other dear ones in your life. You were loved by and loved so many. We all want to keep you close.