CHRISTMAS
We don't know for sure if angels exist. They say that those whom we cannot let go of in our hearts become angels. Those whose memories are woven from the strongest energy that exists in the universe - from our love, our faith, and our hope. Sometimes they come to us when we sleep - when the thin thread between worlds becomes tangible. And perhaps, if we believed in them, we would remember how we communicated with them in our dreams. They also say that it is the power of our feelings that gives them wings. But is that really true? And is there a force in the universe that can allow us to see them again?
He
Almost a year had passed since they were left alone... She left, leaving him and their three little daughters alone in a house that still smelled of her shampoo and fresh baking. He held on as best he could: adults are sometimes allowed not to fall, but sometimes they simply don't have the strength to stand - their legs give way. He still fought the pain somehow, but they didn't.
For them, grief was a nameless beast that hid under the bed and rustled so loudly that they couldn't sleep all night. Not a day went by without him remembering their last happy vacation. There were many of them - in tents or hotels, on planes or bicycles, in cars or canoes. They always conquered the world together.
After that last vacation, they did not return to their big, noisy, but beloved city. Her birthday was only a few days away, and they immediately went to their little house in the mountains. He had once bought this warm, cozy nest to celebrate family holidays there, to escape the fast pace of the city on weekends. It was their place of strength...
But not this time.
They decorated the house with the girls, bought gifts, and placed them in front of the fireplace before she left on her business trip. And when she came in and turned on the lights, a celebration awaited her. In general, holidays in their family were a special ritual. In their family, holidays were always a special ritual: they tried to surprise her, to give her emotions for any reason, but still couldn't keep up with her. She was the soul of the house, and her smile alone turned every day into a holiday.
In the morning, they sorted through their things after the trip. Suddenly, he heard a clang behind him - something had fallen and broken. He turned around and saw her rearranging Christmas tree decorations on the shelf, the very ones she always bought with such excitement. One of them lay broken at her feet.
At that moment, he thought it was nothing, that these things happen. Yes, she would be upset, of course, but he could always find a way to make her smile again.
But when he looked up, he realized that this was not just disappointment. There was no resentment in her eyes, only confusion and fear. Her hands were shaking, and she slowly began to sink to the floor. He rushed to her and managed to catch her - her body was already unconscious, without support, without sound...
Then there were hospitals. Tests. Queues. Words that broke on her lips - and a terrible diagnosis. She had always been strong. Sometimes she complained of slight dizziness, attributing it to the mountain air or fatigue. She had hardly ever been ill. And now... now their world had collapsed under the weight of a single word. The disease burned her up in a matter of weeks - so quickly that her consciousness couldn't keep up with the horror.
She was released from the hospital for just one day at Christmas. Weak, almost transparent. Her strength had almost completely left her, and only her eyes shone with the same love and warmth as always... He put up the Christmas tree and, together with the children, they decorated it under her guidance. According to their tradition, each of them hung a bauble on the tree and made a wish... He lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the tree so that she could, as always, hang her bauble and make her wish.
A couple of days later, she was gone. It was as if the world had taken a breath and never exhaled.
He gathered his last strength, trying to distract the children. He diligently pretended that life was normal - as if it were possible to act out something that no longer existed. He needed support just as much as they did, but he was their father, and they were his children. He had lost his wife and the love of his life, and they had lost their mother, who had been everything to them. There are statistics in life, but numbers are meaningless when your soul is empty. No matter how much you multiply it, that part of her will always remain empty.
He was holding on with his last ounce of strength - and that's why there was less and less of it.
Months passed, but the pain remained. A happy life, destroyed in one fell swoop, came to a standstill - walls without doors, air without oxygen. Despair rolled in like an avalanche. He choked on this white silence, drowning in it like in snow. Everyone said: you have to let go, you have to move on.
But the word “on” without her would not stay on his tongue - it crumbled like ice under his heel.
Then the dreams came. At first, they were rare, distant: as if she were standing on the other side and waving to him, and he was walking toward her, afraid to wake up, because there are no bridges in wakefulness. He started seeing a psychologist. The psychologist spoke calmly: it happens, it's normal, it will pass. Probably. But he couldn't accept that word - “pass.” . These dreams were not a delusion, but a memory in which he could breathe. She was so alive there that he wanted to apologize to the day for choosing the night.
Once, his younger daughter sat on his lap and suddenly, very maturely, asked him not to cry - everything was fine with her mother. She came to her in her dreams, she just couldn't come back, she said. He remembered how he had comforted the older one, whose crying broke into sobs like a thin thread, and how glad he was that the middle one hadn't heard. At that time, she had just begun to speak, but after her mother's death, her voice fell silent, and only tears spoke for her.
For them, she was everything: mother, wife, friend, and girlfriend, dawn, sun, sunset, and moonlight on the water. But life had to go on. You have to live - the words sounded like an order with no addressee. Months passed, but each one was like a bad dream from which there was no escape until the alarm clock rang. And it still didn't ring.
Another blow came from his eldest daughter - she drank all of her mother's pills. She was barely saved at the hospital, and he realized that he was betraying her memory. He couldn't cope...
On the advice of friends, he invited a child psychologist - the best he could find. He came to the house, said the right words, and made notes in his notebook. But every time it ended the same way: with the younger daughter's hysterics and the older daughters' quiet tears. “You don't understand,” the younger one stubbornly repeated at the end of the session. “She's not dead.” After a while, the doctor just shrugged his shoulders: it takes time. But time just passed by - as if it had forgotten about their existence.
The dreams did not fade away - they became more intense. The hope that “it will pass” melted away like frost on glass. And it wasn't just him: the girls whispered more and more often that their mother was nearby. He wasn't afraid for his sanity - he was afraid for them. A child's world is as fragile as a Christmas tree ornament, and the long echo in it can cut your palms.
Christmas was approaching. He waited for it with fear. He was afraid of a new cycle of memories - not only his own, but also those of the children. He mentally applied bandages to their hearts, as if they were wounds, knowing that the first reminder of her would tear them open again. And yet, deep inside, beneath the fear, there was a tiny spark: if they endured this together, perhaps time would shift. Not forward or backward - just from where it was. So that it would start again, so that they could move forward in a life that had long since stopped.
They
They didn't immediately understand what was happening. First, their mother left for the hospital, and their father said she would be back soon. She was gone for a long time, and when she finally arrived - briefly - she looked very ill. But how could they have known what lay ahead? They decorated the Christmas tree together: Mom didn't get up from her chair, she just pointed to a spot, and they hung a toy there. Dad then lifted her up and carried her to the tree so she could hang her ball and make a wish. In the evening, they sat by the fireplace and talked a lot about everything at once, afraid to miss a single word. Mom smiled, and tears rolled quietly down her face. The younger one wiped them away with her palm and asked why Mom was crying. She replied that it was just smoke from the fireplace. They believed her, but it seems they already sensed the trouble that was looming.
Then she was simply gone. She went back to the hospital and never returned. It was as if a light on the Christmas tree flickered, blinked, and went out, and with it, the whole world was plunged into darkness.
They saw how their father was trying to support them and tried to help him in return. But it didn't work out well.
Every night, the youngest fell asleep crying into her pillow, unable to sleep without her mother's pajamas - she lay next to her and gave her the illusion of something warm, unattainable, but still alive.
The middle one stopped talking - as if she had closed the door from her world to this one and thrown away the key. Only her tears spoke for her, quiet and long.
The eldest held on to the other two at first, pretending to be an adult, and then one day she drank all of her mother's pills. She was taken away, and the house became so empty that the walls rang. A couple of days later, she returned. That night, the three of them slept, clinging tightly to each other's hands like a knot that could not be untied, protecting each other from the world where the three of them - and their father - had been left without her. And next to them on the pillow lay the same pajamas.
That same night, their mother came to them in their dreams for the first time. Then, almost every night. Just as she used to come to their room: to kiss them, tuck them in, hold her hand on their heads, and whisper, “Sleep.” In their dreams, everything was as it had been before - warm, bright... and impossible. After all, night always gives way to morning. And they learned to wake up slowly, trying to hold on to sleep - like water slipping through their fingers.
It was hard for Dad - they could see it, like they could see the rain outside the window. He wiped away his tears, pretending they were smoke from the fireplace or laughter, but that laughter left completely different traces. He said he would cope, but he himself waited for nightfall - as if it were salvation.
Almost a year had passed, and life for each of them stood still, like a clock whose spring had finally run down. The kindergarten, the school - everyone tried to help them, but they just went with the flow, watching the world from the sidelines in silence. The same silence that had been drowning out the sounds around them for almost a year.
She
She remembered breaking her favorite toy. Then - darkness. And then - his hands, frightened eyes, and a sudden, inexplicable weakness that enveloped her like a shadow.
She remembered saying that she just hadn't slept enough and that it would soon pass - and then she couldn't get up. How he picked her up and carried her to the car to take her to the hospital.
She remembered how, after endless tests, she was given her sentence - terrible, swift, leaving no time for life, not even for one last breath to enjoy it and say goodbye...
She remembered how the silence rang out where voices had once sounded. She remembered how she fought for herself and how the doctors fought for her. She remembered the despair frozen in their eyes.
She remembered how, on the eve of Christmas, she begged to be allowed to go home - at least for one day.
She remembered how she tried not to scare the children - she smiled and joked, but couldn't get up from her chair. Her body trembled treacherously, and her youngest wiped away the tears she no longer had the strength to wipe away, asking what was wrong with her.
She remembered the happy life she had been given, and which she had generously given to those she loved. She remembered all their years together - with him, with the children, with the love that made every day bright.
She remembered how she said goodbye to the children, pretending that she was only leaving “for a little while.” She remembered how he sat by her bed for days on end, never leaving her side. She remembered his last, stubborn tenderness - his hand holding hers until the very end, and his lips on her forehead, leaving a kiss that she could no longer feel.
She remembered how she left. How the world stopped ringing, the walls spread out into infinity. How she dissolved into a ray of light - where there is no bottom, no top, where there is no yesterday or tomorrow. How she was ready to accept the endless circle of life.
It seemed as if her light was about to fade away, melting into the boundless expanses of a world we do not know. It would dissolve, entering the great circle of life, where there are no bodies, no names, no pain, no promises.
But the universe was in no hurry to accept her. Not because it rejected her, but because everything in it is based on unshakable postulates, and even it cannot transgress its own laws...
What held her was stronger than the cycle of life itself. The thread was thinner than light, but stronger than time. She fell asleep in the turbulent flow, and yet her consciousness cut through it, not allowing it to carry her away to where a new birth would create another - Her.
They called her - they were not ready to let her go. With the power of their love, unconsciously, they caused the very fabric of the universe to crack - where neither the energy of the stars nor the pull of black holes could destroy it. All this is just a quiet whisper next to the voice that speaks of love.
They called her. And the power of that call gave her wings - not the kind that are born of imagination, but that invisible connection that only the universe itself understands. Unconscious, but alive - in their dreams and in her journey that never began.
The infinity of distance is just a figment of humanity's imagination. Everything exists in everything at the same time. And no matter how far away she was, their souls still touched each other.
Thousands of years ago, people - consciously or unconsciously - stopped hearing the universe. But when the mind sleeps, the soul can return to where everything becomes everything at once. And that is where they found each other again.
What once lit up our universe did not leave it - it became that light. And each of us will one day be reflected in the mirror of its consciousness. Their love reminded the universe why it lit up and breathed meaning into it...
Christmas
Almost a year later, they returned there. To the house where laughter used to fill the air on weekends and holidays, where the fireplace burned, and where everything breathed with the warmth of their family. It had been empty for a whole year. They were afraid to return - but he decided it was a chance. A chance to experience Christmas, which had once become a farewell. A chance to at least try to start a new life...
He deliberately brought the children late in the evening, on the eve of the holiday. When they fell asleep, he walked around the house. Everything was just as they had left it. The blanket was on the chair from which she had just gotten up. Her slippers were standing nearby. The Christmas tree was still twinkling with toys. Nothing had changed since that day. At first, he wanted to take it all away, but he changed his mind. They had lived in pain for a whole year, and if he had brought them here today to say goodbye to her, let them have a chance to do so.
In the morning, he woke them up. They spent the whole day sitting on the sofa, listening to the crackling of the fireplace and the whistling of the kettle, and remembering her. In the evening, he said that he had brought them here to say goodbye. Tomorrow they would leave - to another country, another continent - and start a new life. And one day they would return here. But only when the pain became a shadow: one that would haunt them for the rest of their lives, but would no longer block out the light.
They celebrated Christmas as usual - together, on the sofa, hugging each other. He didn't put them to bed. Before falling asleep, the younger one asked:
“Dad, did Mom become an angel?”
“Yes,” he replied quietly.
“Then will she come to us for the rest of our lives?”
“No... It's time for us to learn to live on our own.”
“But we won't. And we don't want to... And we're not going anywhere. Our home is here. With her.”
If only they knew that he couldn't and didn't want to - but adults don't have the right to say such things... Or even think them...
They fell asleep - all together, on one sofa, under her blanket. And they did not see that she was standing nearby - woven from the breath of stars, from billions of tiny sparks. The same one who came to them every night to guard their sleep.
But here, in a place where memories overwhelmed them with renewed force - in the mountains, where the earth itself intensifies every sensation - the barrier separating their worlds could not hold. Under the pressure of their emotions, it cracked like thin ice. Four loving hearts, four souls, clinging to her image, tore through the fabric of reality.
They say angels are made of love and light. But they could not be angels if the pain they brought with them from the real world was woven into the light from which they were made.
But now, at the moment when the barrier between reality and the stars collapsed, her memories and pain returned to her completely - the very knowledge and feelings that are not meant for angels, the feelings that make us alive.
She stood next to them and cried - quietly, so as not to wake them.
Their endless love for her gave her wings, and her love for them prevented her from leaving forever and made her their angel. And now she, like an endless river on both sides, broke down the wall between worlds. And it gave way, crumbling under her pressure, and at some point collapsed, revealing what we call the universe...
***
At dawn, they woke up - and there she was, sleeping peacefully on the sofa with them. Every morning for a year now, they had been having the same dream. And when they woke up, they were always afraid to open their eyes - they knew that with the light would come the realization that she was gone. But now, when they opened their eyes, it was as if they were still asleep. Sleeping the same dream together - infinitely real, but with her. Which meant it was still a dream.
They hugged her - warm, alive, real - and remained silent, holding their breath, afraid to wake up again in a world where she was not there.
If they could see what people cannot see, they would have noticed the wings lying on the floor. And like frost on glass, they slowly dissolved in the rays of the morning sun. And on her back, in the places where the wings had once grown, tiny sparks glimmered. And the fewer there were, the closer the moment of awakening was. The moment when she would open her eyes again in this real world. Open them after a sleep that had lasted a whole year. Open them to see those who had never let her go during all this time - those whose endless love had given her the strength to return.
She needed that sleep. She hadn't slept for a whole year. No one knew what lay ahead, but now she was asleep. And her infinitely peaceful expression gave hope that they would have many happy years together ahead of them.
She opened her eyes, smiled confusedly, and it was clear that she didn't remember the past year. She asked why they had all woken up together on the sofa and whether they had already opened all the presents, or if she would still get something too.
Only now did they realize - it was no longer a dream!
And no one noticed that those five toys had disappeared from the tree. The ones they had hung there a year ago with their secret wishes. They all had the same wish: to be together. And this Christmas, it finally came true.
We know little about the world we live in. But they say there are angels in it - woven from our faith, hope, and love. Memory keeps us from forgetting them and helps them remember us; it is the path along which those we call return. Sometimes they are allowed to cross the border between dream and reality - not by our will, but by a law that is higher than us. This law is simple and boundless - love. It is love that works miracles, connects universes, and brings back those who seemed irretrievable. And if a miracle has a name, that name is Love!
® Author: Anatoliy Kavun
The copyright for the work you have just read is officially registered.
p.s. Thank you for becoming part of the universe I fill with my characters, emotions, reflections, and meanings! If you’d like to read more of my works, you can do so via the link. And if you’re curious about what brought me to authorship - you’ll find that here. All texts on the website are available in four languages (en, ua, de, ru), and you are welcome to share them with your friends, colleagues, or on social media...
If you feel inspired to support my work with a donation - which helps cover costs like translations into other languages or social media promotion - you can do that through the link as well. Authorship takes a lot of time, and I’ll truly appreciate your support with the efforts and expenses that come with it.
And finally, if you notice a mistake in the text or its translation - please let me know!
THANK YOU for helping bring emotion into a world that needs it now more than ever…