I am Christmas shopping in Marshalls, skimming the shelves for potential stocking stuffer treasures, when I hear my dad’s uplifting ringtone reverberate amid the reindeer ornaments and peppermint bark. The sound stops me in my tracks as instinctively, I reach for my phone.

But just as quickly, I am walloped by an all-too-familiar pang of grief. It seeps through my body, bleeding into the pool of tears that has instantly settled behind my eyes.

Of course it’s not my dad calling.

I watch as the woman next to me cheerfully answers her phone, the actual source of the ringtone, and I quickly navigate my cart to the next aisle. But the memories, like the sorrow, trail me.

It’s been five months since my dad passed away, and it’s still difficult to imagine a day when I might hear that ringtone and not jump in response, wondering if he’s calling just to check in or does he need me to schedule his grocery delivery? Maybe he’s looking for assistance with his online bill payments. Or perhaps he’s simply seeking a supportive ear, someone to listen while he inventories this new pain and that old ache and that other persistent discomfort. All of the routine topics that were cause for us to talk daily, sometimes multiple times a day, during the last year of his life.

After I escape the festively decorated department store and all that is painfully merry and bright within, I sit ensconced in the solitude of my car, where my tears can finally flow safely and privately. An inappropriate twinge of irritation percolates in my gut; how did another shopper have the nerve to pick that same ringtone, I wonder? It can’t possibly be a common iPhone jingle because I don’t recall ever hearing it, other than on my own phone, where it belonged exclusively to my dad. I remember selecting the ringtone years ago, completely randomly. Now, something prompts me to look up the name; it is called ‘By the Seaside.’ The discovery makes me smile; there was no place my dad loved more.

I’m not sure why I haven’t removed my dad from my phone contacts. His picture remains right there inside the tiny circle in my Favorites list. It’s one of many I have of him centered between my two boys. Looking at it now reminds me how, every time he visited, he insisted on getting a photo with them, from the early years when his arms rested atop their tiny school-aged shoulders until they ultimately grew to tower above him as adults.

The contact information for my mom is still in my Favorites list, too; she passed away three months before my dad. Her iPhone picture includes Aubrey and me, representing our treasured trio, three generations of tightly bonded mothers and daughters. Gilmore Girls, without a trace of the matriarchal angst. It was snapped on Mother’s Day 2016, years before Parkinson’s Disease stole her ability to walk, to reason, to communicate beyond a few simple words. Quietly pilfering little pieces of her like a thief in the night. An agonizing transformation that at times was so gradual, I almost didn’t recognize the lovely fragments slipping away until suddenly only shards remained.

Since I’m still holed up in my car, puffy-eyed and no doubt inhabiting a parking space coveted by an eager Christmas shopper, I decide to check the name of the ringtone that I (also randomly) assigned to my mom. I discover that it’s ‘Piano Riff,’ which feels equally appropriate to my dad’s ‘By the Seaside,’ considering my mom always wanted to learn to play the piano. I feel a hint of sadness now, realizing that she never got around to doing it. I wish she would have gifted that to herself.

I really didn’t need to be pummeled today by ringtones and recollections. It has already been kind of a glum week. In fact, the past month has felt like an exercise in momentum-building dread, like I’m marching toward a battlefield where I know I must draw my sword and fight the good fight, but it’s so difficult to drum up the motivation to continue putting one foot in front of the other.

I love the holiday season; I always have. But celebrating without either of my parents for the first time in my 56 years has generated an emptiness I can’t quite translate into words, a heaviness that no amount of tinsel or eggnog or sleigh bells can relieve.

When our family decorated the Christmas tree on Thanksgiving, I hung both of my parents’ stockings on the branches, front and center. I guess I considered it a small token to honor their memory. It was an effort to make it feel like part of them is still with us. But every time I walk past the tree and my eyes lock on those stockings, there is no peace; I’m only reminded, over and over again, that they are gone.

Grief ― apparently it’s the gift that just keeps giving.

For the most part, I continue to complete the holiday tasks that are expected of me, despite the waves of gloominess left in the wake of such an unimagineable two-punch loss. I buy the ingredients needed to bake Christmas cookies. I make an effort to deck the halls. I try to remind myself that all is calm, all is bright. I feel a little guilty that Aubrey has asked me several times if I’m excited about Christmas; I’m trying, really I am. But if I’m being honest, most of the time it feels like I’m on autopilot, like I’m just going through the motions.

While wrapping presents, I am leveled by yet another stark reminder of the absences we will endure this year: our recycled gift bags still display the tags from Christmas 2024, when our family was significantly more extended than it is today. “To Aubrey, Love Nana.” “To Dad, Love Melissa.” “To Grandpa, Love Tanner & Braden.”

And I wonder, where do I package this grief?

Everyone I know who has experienced the weight of profound loss insists that each ‘first’ holiday without a loved one undeniably cuts the deepest. Almost unanimously, they insist that it will get easier. They promise that, as time passes, the missing will sting a little less, the emptiness won’t be quite so jarring. It gives me hope. Perhaps next year, seeing my parents’ stockings hanging on the tree will make me smile and fill me with a warmth that, today, is just as absent as they are.

Still, even in the midst of my anguish, I recognize that the magnitude of the loss I’m experiencing ― the kind that leaves behind an ache this raw, a hole incapable of being refilled ― is simply a testament to how beautiful and fierce the love once was.

The kind of love that lingers in your soul long after they are gone. The kind of love where they will forever be your Favorites. The kind of love where the simple sound of a ringtone is powerful enough to bring you to tears.