✔️Soundtrack To My Life (18+) part 1

'Tis The Damn Season

Sam, December 2000

When I was a kid, Christmas was the most magically time of the year, with my birthday on Christmas Eve it was like having an extended holiday. Mum, Dad and I would put our tree up on the 1st and they would both help me decorate it but putting the star on top, that was always my job. 

My Mum would go completely overboard at Christmas, making the whole house look and feel like you'd just stepped inside Santa's workshop, there was a toy train that ran around the base of our tree, lights hung from one end of the living room to the other, glittery tinsel wrapped around the banister and 3 stockings were hung over the fireplace, each with our names stitched in. Nana would bring over an assortment of sugary treats almost every day and on Christmas Day Mum's whole family would come to our house and Dad would cook a hot turkey dinner.

It must have broken my Mum's heart the year I turned 11 and came home and told her that Santa wasn't real or when I was 12 and I refused to help decorate the tree or even put up my stocking because the magic of Christmas had lost it's shine a little. I wish I'd known then that my time with Mum was running out, that I was pissing away precious minutes, being locked up in my room, blasting death metal music as loud as I could when I should have been by her side, helping her hang the lights and wrap the tinsel, getting excited about putting up my stocking and opening the doors of my advent calendar daily to find what surprise Nana had baked, wanting to go out and sing carols around the neighbourhood because after Mum died the magic of Christmas  completely died with her.

Hindsight is useless once they're gone, it's like that little piece of guilt inside of you that digs its way into your soul and reminds you what a selfish prick you were and as much as what you wish you could go back and change the outcome, you can't.

 Now my birthday and Christmas were just another day, of course Dad and I celebrated in our own way but the tree that we'd put up was never decorated, the stockings were now so old that they had holes in them and the turkey dinner had been replaced with a bbq lunch with just the two of us. 

This year was going to be very different though because we'd been invited to celebrate Christmas Day at the Kreslin's and I knew Veronica and Bridget, much like my Mum, were crazy about Christmas. Roni had been so excited about every aspect, from putting up their tree and decorating their own house to helping Celeste decorate mine, she'd even patched the holes in the stockings too and baked gingerbread cookies. 

Dad picked me up at the airport on the 23rd, he look tired but happy. He took my suitcase and we walked together to his car, making small talk along the way, it wasn't until I brought up Celeste that I noticed how nervous he was and for a moment I started to worry, had they broken up? I hope not, they were so good together.

"I need to ask you something and if you say no then I'll drop it and we will never speak of this again" Dad said as when I had buckled myself into his Land Rover, a new present he had bought himself this year.

"What would I ever say no to Dad?" The fear in me was increasing, Dad and I had always had an open and honest relationship, there was never anything we hid from each other so to see him so worked up about asking me something told me this had to be big.

"Sam, I love you and I love your Mum, very much and I in no way am trying to disrespect her memory" He fumbles, tears springing to his eyes as he talks about Mum. I know he loved her, well worshipped her for a better word, she was his everything and when she died a part of him died too. "Celeste and I, well, things have gotten serious between us as you are aware."