Okay, so I love the 70′s is on in the background, and it was the first thing I thought of when my title line was empty. But you know, now that I think about it, it’s perfect.

Reverend Ralph Woodrow Knight, 91, passed away on Friday, December 26th in the presence of his family at Mayview in Raleigh. He was the former pastor of many Baptist churches throughout the Southeast, but more importantly, he was Brian’s loving grandfather. Brian inherited from him his unruly hair, his quick temper and his jolly belly laugh.

I’ve thought about a lot of things in the last 24 hours since Granddaddy Knight died, and it’s not lost on me that he was the same age as my own grandfather when he died in 2001. It’s also not lost on me that the holidays are hard enough after you’ve lost a parent, but now Christmas will always be a reminder of losing a grandparent as well.

As I was reading through the obituaries in the News & Observer today, I noticed that some childhood friends of mine lost their grandmother on Christmas Day. She was of similar age and health, but that’s not what struck me – I was astounded that, like my husband, these friends of mine in their 30′s and 40′s also still had their grandparents. Their children were lucky enough to know and love their great-grandparents. That is one of Brian’s great regrets, that his father, and now his grandfather, will never know our children, should we have any.

Tonight, after spending the day cleaning out Granddaddy Knight’s belongings from his room at Mayview, making sure that we had funeral clothes ready and trying to get that damn, damn dryer to work, we sat down in front of the television and flipped channels. I turned on The Bucket List with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, and I’m so glad I did. Everyone knows the story behind the movie (two dying men work on a list of things to do before they “kick the bucket”) so it wasn’t a surprise to me that there were sad and touching moments. What was a surprise to me was that at the end of the movie, just before the credits rolled, John Mayer’s song “Say” started and I bawled like a baby. I’ve quoted those lyrics here before, because they’re just that good, and it bears repeating tonight.

We selfishly spent a lot of hours over the holiday complaining about this or that, hurrying from one place to another, wishing for more hours to sleep in, and struggling with the never-ending task of keeping the house tidy enough for company. What we didn’t do a lot of was telling our family, when we were all gathered in one space together, that we love them. We didn’t tell them that despite the fact that they used our good guest towels to wipe chocolate from their faces, or that they left discarded chicken bones all over the house, or that they asked us to make one too many desserts — we didn’t tell them how much we love them. We didn’t tell them that we enjoyed the chaos in our house, or that we enjoyed that ridiculously long story they told us while breathing their garlic breath in our faces and sloshing their champagne on our shoes.

But we do love them. And we love being around them. And we would be beside ourselves if they weren’t here.

We weren’t there last night when Granddaddy Knight died. We were asleep in bed, tossing and turning and waiting for the phone call that eventually came. Surely he knew that we loved him. Surely he knew that we were sorry we didn’t visit on Christmas Day like we planned. And surely, as surely as we know that he is in heaven with Bernie and everyone else we love, we know that he is smiling down on us now, waiting for Monday to come, when his 4 children, 13 grandchildren, and 25 great-grandchildren will come together to remember his life.

Below is a really blurry picture of my family together on Christmas Eve. There are a lot of us, and this isn’t even all of us. But it’s who we love and who we are. And tonight, I’m so very grateful.