Louise O'Neill: 'Despite everything, we will be okay. We will get through this'

"That gathering of the same faces every Christmas morning for as long as I can remember has marked the passage of time so precisely. What 2020 has in store for me, a quiet, muffled affair, hardly seems like Christmas at all."

Picture: Miki Barlok

Last year, I wrote my column about our first Christmas since my grandmother had died. “It seems inconceivable that she won’t be there,” I wrote, “for she has always just been there.” 

I went on to say that, “so much of Christmas is predicated on the idea of consistency – tradition, ritual, deeply engrained habits. It is a time of year where resisting change is not just expected, it is actually celebrated and because of that, it’s difficult to deal with grief, loss, the greatest transformation of all. The empty seat at the table becomes even more apparent when everything else – the decorations, the music, the food – remains the same.”