It’s hard at holiday time – and let me just say it — to go on when there is someone missing from our lives.  This may be the first holiday that they are gone or it may be many years.  The emotion is often as strong.

We can’t bring them back – or maybe we can in a very special way.

• Recite the names of departed loved ones who are in your head on a daily basis.  As long as we do not forget, they are alive.
• Pick a trait that the people who you miss the most have and make it your life’s mission to have that trait live on through you.
• Populate your house, desk and office with pictures of people who have died so that you can see them.  I will sometimes even talk to my best friend or my father when I see the picture.  A person’s positive energy never dies.
• Make a meal that reminds you of the person you miss.  I loved my mother’s Italian cooking and every attempt I make to duplicate her great meals becomes a joyous remembrance of her.

Perhaps you will share your ways to keep the memory of someone you miss alive.

Oscar Hammerstein in the musical Carousel wrote:  “As long as there is one person on earth who remembers you, it isn’t over.