The holiday season is a cheerful time for most. Decorating the tree while blasting Michael Bublè, drinking hot chocolate more than we probably should, waiting for that magical first snowfall... and doing all of these things with the people we hold closest to our hearts. But for some, there’s a certain sadness looming over the months leading up to the new year. A sadness that sneaks up on us when we look around the room and not everyone that should be there, is.

Losing loved ones, at any time of the year, is simply terrible. It’s the purest form of heartbreak that exists. Grief is one of those feelings that I don’t believe we ever truly learn how to deal with. So it sucks during the summer, and the fall and the spring, but winter comes along and everything seems to get a little bit harder. All of the happiness and love around us makes us remember the ones we lost who used to be a big part of that happiness.

The kind of happiness we feel when we’re sitting around the dinner table, asking the cousin across from us to put some mashed potatoes on our plate. The happiness when we roll three dots in left, right, center and get to keep all our family members’ quarters. The happiness when that one uncle has one too many beers and starts telling stories from his past, the kind of stories that make us laugh and love our families even more. It’s hard to not be angry that some people aren’t there to hear the stories, and that some seats at the table are now empty.

But we have to use all our power to remember something: they are there. They live on in our hearts. And while the sorrow we feel will never disappear into the thin, cold air, the overwhelming emotions that come with remembering those that are no longer with us is proof that their lives held an infinite amount of beauty. So we’ll raise a candy-cane painted shot glass up to their memory and make sure we never forget the impact they had on our lives. And for those who still remain, we’ll hold them close, and hold each other up as we grieve, however messy that process may get.

Family and loved ones are truly the most important things in our lives, and though the holidays can bring up memories of those we miss so dearly, they also remind us that a lot of those people are still here. We can never know what tomorrow will bring, so we must love unconditionally, never take a single moment for granted, and cherish the ones who used to sit in those empty chairs. Because the fact that we miss them so much just means they gave us that much to miss.