Forget December: Heartbreak That Found Its Way Back to the Light

 Something Corporate - Forget December

“Forget December…”

He came to the back door with hockey sticks in his hands.

The kind with real tape around the handle and a slick black puck tucked under one arm like it meant something. And to me, it did. It meant everything. I was nine years old, skating-obsessed, Mighty Ducks in my blood, and Christmas was still magic. Still intact.

Our living room didn’t have a couch we had a giant tan beanbag instead. A six foot pleather moon crater that belonged to me and my brother, Bobby. My parents had traded traditional for something more… them. Two recliners for themselves. A beanbag for the kids. It was weird and warm and oddly perfect.

That morning, we were gearing up to hit the dentist office parking lot across the street,our makeshift hockey rink whenever it was closed. We had boat oars for sticks and a ball that skidded like it wanted to be a puck. But now? Real sticks. A real puck. It felt like a dream.

I opened the door and there he was...my dad. His hair a little windblown, arms full of the kind of gift that says I know you. I see what you love. (We had also accidentally broken our mom’s kayak ores using them as hockey sticks earlier that month… so they had in addition become part necessity at this point.) 

I was buzzing. Bobby was buzzing.

It was Christmas Eve. There was the smell of cinnamon and hot chocolate in the air. The excitement of lights to come and stockings hung. 

And then my mom’s voice cut through the air.

“I need to talk to you.”

⸻

“I need to talk to you.”

She pulled him into the bedroom, and the entire energy changed.

I felt it before I understood it.

Bobby and I were halfway into our rollerblades, hearts still racing with hockey dreams, when she came back out shaking, crying, shouting. My Nanny was there too, trying to calm her, trying to shield us, but the truth had already broken through the walls.

He had an affair. It’s over.

I was nine years old. I didn’t understand the mechanics of betrayal. I just knew something beautiful had shattered in the middle of our holiday.

Bobby understood more. He was almost thirteen, and when I turned to him and said, “Come on, let’s still play,” he looked at me with this hollow kind of heartbreak and said, “Lauren, don’t you get it? Life as we know it is over.”

But we still tried…. he still tried, for me. We went outside. We hit the puck across the parking lot and tried to pretend it was just another day, like maybe if we skated hard enough, the world would shift back into place.

It didn’t.

⸻

Christmas morning was quiet.

My dad slept in one of the recliners.

The tan beanbag didn’t feel like a safe planet anymore it felt like a crash site.

My mom moved around the kitchen slowly. I remember her trying to keep it together. I remember all of us trying.

There were still presents. Still food. Still a Christmas tree.

But it felt like we were acting out a play for ghosts.

Like the house was full of invisible memories already ones we hadn’t lived yet, but somehow already carried.

“…it won’t be better than I remember it before.”

I was sixteen when I heard the song.

Back seat of Clint’s car. Daniel riding shotgun. A Something Corporate CD in the stereo.

I wasn’t expecting it. We were just driving probably coming home from the mall, windows cracked, night settling in.

And then the piano hit.

Andrew McMahon’s voice floated out and the lyrics landed like a gut punch I didn’t see coming.

Forget December. It won’t be better than I remember it before.

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t move.

Just sat there, trying to hide the tears sliding down my cheek like they were nobody’s business.

It felt like the song had been written for me.

For that little girl at the back door.

For the rollerblade dreamer who lost something she didn’t even know she could lose.

Christmas had never quite come back. Not all the way. Not yet.

It still carried that ache. That ghost. That shadow you couldn’t quite hang an ornament on.

But then came Jamie.

I told him everything about the fight, the hockey sticks, the heartbreak. I told him how Christmas had turned into something I couldn’t fully trust anymore. How even the lights felt dimmer somehow, like they remembered too.

And he didn’t try to fix it.

He didn’t tell me to move on or look at the bright side.

He just said, “Let’s go see some lights.”

So we did.

We drove through the rich neighborhoods, the ones where every lawn looked like a movie set. I hadn’t done that in years. Not since Hilltop Lakes. Not since the night the magic cracked open.

I remember holding his hand in the car. I remember the soft hum of the heater and the way the lights reflected on the windshield like stars trying to break through.

That was the year Christmas started to come back to me.

Not all at once. Not like some holiday miracle.

But piece by piece. Light by light.

We spent that first Christmas together at my mom’s place in Petrolia, playing games with my stepdad’s family laughing, eating, passing around ridiculous white elephant gifts. I remember feeling something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Magic.

⸻

Jamie made it his mission to bring the joy back.

Every year after that, he tried. Even when we had nothing. Even when things were tight.

He reminded me what Christmas could be... not about gifts or perfection, but about love. About the story of something bigger, someone born into the chaos to bring peace.

He told me once, “Our best Christmases are still ahead of us.”

And he was right.

⸻

“And New Year’s Eve came, but nothing had changed. All the problems just got worse…”

That lyric used to haunt me.

Because that’s what it felt like for years.

Christmas faded, and New Year’s rolled in like a silent countdown to more brokenness. My parents didn’t speak. They couldn’t be in the same room. Every holiday was a negotiation. Every celebration had an invisible crack down the middle.

I tried to be okay with it.

Tried to believe that this was just what life looked like after the fall.

But deep down, I missed what we used to be. I missed the possibility of peace.

And then somehow Jamie made that happen too.

He told them, “You have kids together. You have to talk. You have to show up, even if it’s hard.”

And for whatever reason, they listened.

At first, it was awkward. Clunky. A few short phone calls, maybe a shared laugh here and there.

But it grew.

Into kindness.

Into understanding.

Into something like friendship.

Eventually, my mom left her marriage (an unhealthy one) and moved to Hot Springs.

Into my dad’s house.

Not as lovers. Not to rekindle anything.

But as friends. As roommates.

As two people trying to finish the story better than it started.

And they did...

They were roommates for the last five years of my dad’s life.

They co-grandparented.

They laughed again.

They cooked meals.

They showed up for holidays.

And we had real Christmases together again.

Bobby. My mom. My dad. My kids. And Jamie.

Laughter. Light.

No bitterness. No drama.

Just peace.

Just the miracle of what healing can look like when you leave the door open, just enough, for love to sneak back in.

⸻

I still listen to Forget December.

I still remember everything.

But it doesn’t break me now.

It’s just part of the story.

The girl at the back door.

The hockey sticks.

The beanbag.

The darkness.

The music.

The man who brought the light back.

The children who made it eternal. 

The memories don’t burn like they used to. They hum. They echo. They remind me of how far the light can travel, even after everything’s gone dark.

The pain didn’t vanish. It just changed shape.

And somehow through Jamie, through the kids, through love and the unbelievable grace of my parents finding peace the true magic of Christmas came back to me.

Not in the same way.

In a better one.

The joy I thought I lost… I’ve seen it again in my children’s faces.

The healing I never expected… I watched it happen in real time between my mom and dad.

The love I wasn’t sure I’d feel again… I’ve felt it in the way Jamie held my hand that first night we went looking for lights. In the way he refused to let the past have the final word. 

Because the truth is...

You can’t kill out the stars.

The light always returns. Just not always how we expect. Maybe that’s the most beautiful part of it all.