How the death of my father made me ring in the changes this Christmas

A move to France and the heartbreak of losing her father has meant that Debora Robertson needed to rethink Christmas this year – but bringing in new traditions and ‘no rules’ has brought unexpected joy in a year of grief

Debora Robertson with her beloved father, Bryan (Séan Donnellan)

My father died in April after, to use the argot of obituary notices, a long illness bravely borne. Grief is a strange animal. Time stretches and contracts and spirals in on itself. The days pass slowly and the weeks quickly. I spent months feeling as though I was trapped behind glass, separate, muffled, stumbling around in my own life but not really present. It was Easter and now, somehow, it’s Christmas. The first one without him.

I’ve always loved Christmas, its rituals and traditions, the messy excess. But in truth, we haven’t had a Christmas like that for quite a few years. My father’s illness meant dinner on trays, a quiet day. I tried not to miss too much of the life before, of full, noisy tables, mismatched plates and borrowed chairs. And I tried not to feel gnawing envy when I saw other people’s exuberant, peopled, Christmases on social media.

I know I was mourning him while he was still alive. I missed the clever, funny, opinionated, stubborn man he once was, the man who loved cricket and shouting at the television during Prime Minister’s Questions; who read two newspapers a day and who adored his family.