My brother was killed when I was 19. My mom decided we weren't going to have Christmas that year. We had to convince her that her grandchildren already lost enough without taking away Christmas, too. They were 5 and 2 1/2. It was a very sad time. 

But when we believe all we have is the painful present, it serves everybody much better to at least try to look for what made the past merry, and at times downright hilarious. 

I have a very strong memory of Christmas the year before. My youngest niece has just turned 2 years old. All the Christmas presents from family were distributed. In my family, we opened the family gifts (those to and from each other, because Santa came Christmas Day) on Christmas Eve. We had my mom and dad, my brother and his wife, one sister who was single, another sister and her husband, the two nieces, one nephew from my sister, and me. I was very happy because I was old enough to have a good paying job, so I could buy gifts for everybody. 

So when my niece was sitting in her daddy's lap, he opened his gift from me, their Aunt Teresa. My brother loved golf, so I got him a box of his favorite golf balls.

Now, wrapping was a big deal. My brother would wrap a present so the tape covered every loose place in the paper. It was tightly wrapped, and he would laugh as I tried to get into my gift. But that year, I got him. And I'm so glad I did, because this was our last Christmas together. It wasn't about being mean with the wrapping. It was about all the laughter that filled the room with good fun. 

Twenty-four golf balls. And once he made his way into the box with his pocket knife (we really did take this trick pretty far), he found I had individually wrapped each golf ball.

My best memory of my brother came about fifteen minutes later. I looked over and the two-year-old was on her daddy's lap. He had already freed 3 golf balls. I say quietly and watched as he and his little girl unwrapped ball #4. He gasped in surprise. She imitated his look. Then they caught each other's eye and started laughing.

There's almost nothing like the giggling of a two-year-old on her dad's lap, unwrapping individual golf balls.

They kept going, and the silly laughter grew and grew. Yes, I said there's almost nothing, no memory like it; because what really is the best memory was when my brother got tickled by the entire situation, around the time they got to golf ball #15 or so. Then they both were making these priceless, exaggerated, surprised looks as they continued unwrapping golf balls and giggling together, trying so hard to maintain serious faces. 

Yes, you can have Merry Christmas even when it's more of a Memory Christmas. I hope you have one or the other, or both!