The fragrance of the cinnamon greets me first. We measure out heaping teaspoons of the spices which feel like a holiday wafting right up from the bowl.

The mixer contributes its own rhythm, thumping against the counter as it struggles to keep up with the large mass of dough it’s helping join with whirl after whirl of the paddle against flour and butter and molasses and delicious spices. Neutral shades of ingredients turn to a rich, dark, smooth burnt umber.

I can see his hands first: so capable and so skilled. They piloted numerous aircraft over five decades, carefully connected untold circuits on a complex train board for antique trains, took notes on legal documents for such a variety of transactions and projects, and scribbled changing medication combinations for my mama’s winding health journey. Those hands wrapped “just because” presents of puzzles and clever toys for grandbabies in cheerful paper, those hands penned heartfelt letters to his children and grandchildren. And those hands held my own, shaking as we grieved my mama, firm and steadfast as we walked though life together. More than anything: those hands held, protected, and played with little babies. He was never happier than holding them, dancing with them, stroking their soft baby and toddler and little kid hair, clasping their tiny hands in his for crossing streets and scary moments.

Those beautifully talented Grampy hands also knew how to arrange cookie cutters just so, maximizing the available oval of pepparkakor dough, a nod to his Swedish heritage and some of his favorite flavors. I can see the gold glint of his wedding ring which adorns my finger now. I can see the red plastic cutters, each with a story about it being someone’s favorite, or the best one to decorate with sprinkles, or the coveted shape everyone wanted from the two tier cookie plate on Christmas Eve. The rocking horse cookie cutter always invited an extra sweet smile across his face and for a second I could see a very young Stevie standing at his grandmother’s side, eager and earnest, learning how to bake on their afternoons together.

We never missed a moment to bake cookies together at Christmastime. It was part of who we were as a family: Jan Wright always brought a tin of freshly baked cookies on every trip, they were seen as a necessity as much as a treat. Her cookies welcomed new neighbors and reminded babies at camp or college what home tasted like. Cookies as a compass, a north star? It feels right.

The copper star with fluted edges was one he always made extras of – that cutter dating back to his childhood. He made a pile of those stars, the beloved pepparkakor cookies in December 2020 with us before COVID arrived and changed the entire direction of our lives and our future together. Can still see him at the counter guiding an effervescent two year old and a thrilled five year old with tiny sized rolling pins. Trying to keep them from eating too much of the dough, and laughing when he failed. This joy, so warm and real. The impossibility of that juxtaposition within days: between a burst of life as we knew it and life (and death) dark and horrific, as we had never known it.

Christmas 2020 unfolded differently than any we ever shared as a family, and the trauma of his terrifying slide into danger in the hospital on and right after Christmas Day and his death days after the new year will never leave the depths of my being.

And somehow still I want to rise to greet what hurts so terribly with what is bright, and relentless, and love filled, and true: our connection. Our moments. Our traditions.

I slide his perfect cookie spatula under hot shapes of trees and bells and stars, the spatula which he took from his grandmother’s kitchen and carried with him and then with my mom and our family from the 1960s until today, where it now resides in my kitchen. It’s the only one just perfect for moving dough from countertop to cookie sheet and cookie sheet to cooling rack. I hear his voice extolling the virtues of the spatula and the deliciousness of our baking work, and the clarity of his laughter, a sound which feels safe and real.

I behold the cookies on the cooling rack, the magic of holiday spices swirling up up up, and I reach for the fluted star for my first bite. His childhood memories in a shape. My North Star. My history. How I came to be here, and how I can keep giving them forward to my babies and the world.

We refuse to let your memory fade even a little, Daddy. We strive to keep you here, and we will. At Christmas, and always. Merry Christmas Eve, until we can bake together again. I love you.

My brother Georgie was bigger than life, literally and figuratively. He had a big voice, which he was not shy about using, a big body and a big heart. He refused to get vaccinated against COVID and managed to avoid it until the end of January, 2022. He fought for 3 weeks but he could not overcome it. When he was still able to text me, our conversations were sometimes tense as I urged him to agree to treatments in spite of his mistrust of the medical system. It was such a tense and scary time.

Since transitioning from a management position in hospital social work to a part time job, I had started to paint so now, in between working and fraught phone calls with the medical team, I spent time in my studio, painting about my fear, anger, dread and hope against hope that Georgie would not die. When it was clear that he could not survive, I watched him take his last breath on Zoom. In the immediate aftermath of his death, I had no desire to paint. Eventually, this changed and I did several paintings about my sadness and everything that comes with losing a special person. Most siblings are close and have a special bond. Being almost 12 years older than Georgie, we had that bond from day one. It got strained in the presence of the political divide that has happened in our country but it never broke and it made me feel better to paint out my feelings.

When the Attleboro Museum of Art, a local museum in Massachusetts put out a Call for Artists, I applied and was one of 8 artists chosen by two jurors to exhibit in their annual 8 Visions Show in August. My series would be on Layers of Loss, Love and Longing and it touched not only on the death of my baby brother but also on endings: ending of our family business, ending of close family ties, ending of so many mundane and meaningful things.

I paint intuitively, meaning I usually have no set idea of what I will end up with. I allow my feelings, or words that come into my mind, to guide me in choosing my colors, marks, and shapes. For this series, I incorporated both collages of family photos or photo transfers, where the image is embedded into the canvas. At the museum, I displayed a copy of WHO WE LOST, open to my story “I Special Ordered My Brother” and named one of my paintings for the story. I painted VAX to express my fear, anger and frustration, especially because our society become so polarized around a public health emergency. For “Last Text,” I found an app that allowed me to download the text from Georgie’s phone and included the last message he was able to send, shortly after he said “I’m scared.” I tried to encourage him and on February 5th at 2p, he texted me a heart. Then he was intubated and there was no more communication. Bed 58 was his bed in ICU–it’s where I watched him take his last breath. “Everything is Muted” refers to how nothing is the same after losing someone special. Georgie loved being the life of the party and always encouraged me to act silly. He would tease me and make fun of me and he was never afraid to act like a fool for laughs either. “Party Rocket” captures that feeling for me. And in “Yellow Gold” I again include photos of the popcorn business that my father started in 1957 and that Georgie grew into a very successful enterprise. Finally, “We Three” includes photos of my sister, me, and George.

I confess that before the exhibit, I was a little worried that my work might be too personal and that viewers might not relate to it but after reading the comments that people wrote in my guest book, I am so happy to see so many found the work emotional and poignant and could connect my paintings with their own losses. I hope Georgie was happy to be the center of attention and I hope that he is proud of me. I will never not miss him and I will take any opportunity to talk about him and honor his memory.

My family had one plastic tree for twenty or more Christmases. It was a well-constructed one, a bare metal trunk with two or three hoops to hook in each individual branch around the tree. It actually came with an instruction manual. Our Christmas tree and boxes of ornaments occupied several boxes in the basement; the annual production of “putting up the tree” was my introduction to grown-ups without the memory skills to recall from one year to the next the locations of things they put away in the same box in the same place every year. And now I am that grown-up.

The only part of the decoration process that I ever relaxed and enjoyed was the practice of throwing tinsel everywhere—on the tree and near the tree—and the tradition of placing the angel on top. (That is an unsung rite of passage, the moment the family notices one is tall enough to top the tree with a star or angel.)

One of my family’s angels was a seraph whose robe was a cardboard skirt with one staple to hold it in a fluted tube shape and with glued-on glitter that had started to peel off and thin, stringy blonde hair, like a combover. Its halo was glitter glued in a circle on that hair, as well; it was not even on a wire that held it above her head. It was a broken angel. But you see it was our angel, the one my sister and I thought of as ours for some reason, and when nicer, more expensive-looking, gilded angels with a halo on a wire found their way into our house, they were always relegated to lower branches. Our comb over angel always sat on top.

My family’s philosophy that one always roots for the underdog extended to angels.

That perspective may be the best, the longest lasting, gift I received from my family.

I have so many fond memories of my brother Johnny who passed from Covid in mid April 2020. My favorite was making an Advent Christmas Wreath with our parents and grandmother. Johnny and I would gather evergreen branches and pine cones and our parents would supply the four candles, ribbons, and little Christmas ornaments. We would light one candle every week on Sundays before Christmas until all the candles were lit. This was an annual tradition. The wreath with its four candles represented hope, peace, joy and love, and eternal life.

On the last Sunday in Advent our family would light the last candle, sing Christmas carols, and read Christmas stories together. Johnny had the most beautiful voice that I can still hear today. My grandmother would bake a stollen as well as freshly baked German Spice cookies that we all enjoyed. Each candle of the wreath represented bringing light into this world.

I terribly miss the light my brother brought into my world. I will miss him forever. I wish him eternal peace.

Thirty-eight years of the largest Christmas tree, more arguments that it wouldn’t fit, needed two people to carry it, not enough lights and I was always right — but the tree was the most important part of Mike’s Christmas holiday. Our tree was memorable and we had to keep it up till January 6th, dead and all. Everyone came to see Mike’s Christmas tree. How I miss these memories. Just not the same.