This Time, Maybe It’s Time
Four Christmases in silence, and the whisper that still keeps me here.
“This Time, Maybe It’s Time”
By Jacob M.
Dear Readers,
In a few months, we’ll be in the Christmas Mood.
People will be happy.
There will be lights in windows, carols in the air, and families dressing up to take pictures under trees.
The world will hum with cheer and pretend that everything is okay.
But the rest,
The rest is all the same matter.
The same ache.
The same emptiness that decorations can’t cover up.
They say Christmas is a time of light.
But not every soul is wrapped in ribbons.
Not every heart can hold a carol.
Some hearts, like mine, beat differently in December.
Slower. Heavier. As if each tick is carrying the weight of someone I’ve lost. Of someone I still talk to in the dark.
This time of year feels cruel when you’re grieving.
The world sings, but I sit in silence.
People wrap gifts, but I can’t even wrap my thoughts.
I walk past blinking lights and wonder how they shine when my world keeps dimming.
Death has come too often. Too close.
It doesn’t knock anymore, it just walks in.
And I’ve grown tired of setting places at tables where no one sits.
Tired of remembering voices that used to laugh louder than the television in the background.
Tired of saying, “Merry Christmas” when nothing inside me feels merry.
This year...
My doctor said I need to cheer up.
“Jacob, you have to fight,” he said.
But how do you fight when the enemy lives inside your chest?
When your ribs aren’t armour but a shattered cage?
When your heart isn’t beating, it’s bleeding?
He looked at me, pausing longer than usual, and said quietly,
“Jacob, you’re heartbroken.”
That word echoed. Not as metaphor, but as diagnosis.
I remembered reading about broken heart syndrome, how real it is.
How the body listens when the soul gives up.
In today’s world, whether it is for men or women,
Grief moves fast, and healing moves slow.
How we die faster, quieter, sometimes from wounds no scan can see.
And I thought of my mother.
She had a big heart, in every way.
Gentle, giving, good.
And then, one day, her big heart just… gave out.
Myopathic myocardial infarction, they called it.
Fancy words for a heart too tired to keep going.
Looks like I’m headed in that direction too,
hehe, guess it runs in the family.
And I wondered,
Maybe that’s what this is.
Maybe it’s not just sadness. Maybe it’s my heart,
cracked in places I can’t name,
trying to carry too many ghosts.
People talk about heartbreak like it’s a metaphor.
But I know better now.
I know what it feels like to clutch your chest at midnight and wonder if this time, the pain will win.
If maybe your heart doesn’t want to hold on anymore.
Because this time… maybe it’s time.
Maybe the broken pieces don’t need glueing.
Maybe they just need to fall, to scatter, to rest.
Maybe peace doesn’t come in survival.
Maybe peace is letting go of the weight you’ve carried alone for too long.
But then again… maybe not.
Because somewhere, somehow, in this shattered self of mine,
There’s still a whisper.
Not loud. Not brave.
But a whisper.
It says:
Not yet, Jacob.
Not this Christmas.
You may be broken, but you're still here. Still breathing. Still capable of telling the truth when the world won’t. That counts for something.
And maybe it does.
So I’ll sit with my sadness.
I’ll walk through this December not pretending, but present.
I’ll let the lights twinkle without feeling forced to match them.
I’ll grieve. I’ll ache. I’ll remember.
But I’ll stay, for now.
Because someone out there might need this story.
Might need to know they’re not the only one whispering, “maybe it’s time.”
And maybe by staying, I’ve already answered it:
Not yet.
And yes…
Even if the heart aches, I’ll still be writing Christmas stories again.
My children will be in them.
Their laughter, their dreams, the magic they bring.
And of course, The Christmas Chronicles will return in 2025,
because some stories, like love, never truly leave.
Four Christmases.
No trees. No tinsel.
No music humming through the house.
Just the echo of years I can’t get back.
People say, “It’s just a holiday.”
But they don’t know what it’s like when the holiday becomes a reminder.
Of who’s gone. Of what never came. Of all that stayed broken.
Four Christmases.
And still, I wait.
Not for joy, maybe. Not even for peace.
Just for a reason to put the lights up again.
But maybe next year.
Or maybe never.
Still,
I’ll write the stories anyway.
I’ll create Christmas on paper,
because that’s where my children still laugh.
That’s where the music still plays.
That’s where I still believe, even if only for a page.
And maybe, just maybe,
If you’re reading this and feeling the same…
If your heart is breaking, if your silence is screaming,
know this:
You are not alone in the dark.
Some of us are still here, with hearts held together by memory and faith and the fragile string of one more day.
And if you can’t believe in Christmas this year,
believe in this:
A broken heart still means you loved deeply.
And love, real love, never dies.
JacobM
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