It was a sweet moment, but like many things with children, it was over almost as soon as it began. "We gonna go see Mom?"
I nodded. "We are indeed. Say goodbye to Mamie, Pepe, Gammie, and Pop-Pop."
"Bye!" Adelaide said with a salute. "Merriest Christmas!"
"Bye," Eva added on. "Merry Christmas!"
"Let's save our official goodbyes for after we walk y'all to the car," my mother-in-law said, her eyes practically sparkling as she bounced Eva slightly. "No need to rush things."
"Okie dokies, Mamie."
I grinned as we continued to file forward, eventually picking up speed as we exited the school. We said a proper goodbye at my minivan, with lots of hugs and kisses all around.
All the older folks would have been content standing around until every other car had left the parking lot, but my kids had yet to go through their first shift yet, which meant they didn't have the higher resting body temperature or the enhanced metabolism to keep them warm in extreme temperatures.
As much as they loved hanging out with both sets of their grandparents, I wasn't about to let my girl's teeth get to chattering.
Even bundled up as they were, I was maybe, potentially, just a little bit of a worrywart when it came to their health.
After about fifteen minutes or so, my girls were safely in the middle row of seats in the van, and we were pulling up toward the back of the line to leave.
The sun had set since we'd gotten out, making the temperature drop, so I cranked up the heat in the van for the girls, turning all the vents to them, then cracked my window just enough to have the frigid, early night air whip across the top of my head.
While it would be way more convenient when my girls were fully shifters too—I wouldn't have to use the heat other than to defrost—I was in no rush for that to happen.
No, as far as I was concerned, every day we had together was a gift, and I wasn't going to take a single one for granted.
It didn't take us long to reach our destination, since it wasn't really a place many spent their holidays.
But in eighteen months since my wife had resided there, my girls and I had long since become familiar with the route.
Just because she wasn't living with us anymore didn't mean we were going to forget her.
Never.
"Here we are," I said, pulling into the same parking lot we always did. "You girls ready to say hi?"
"Yes," Addy said, and I heard a bit of rustling. "We've got her flowers ready!"
"Thanks, guys. All right, I'll come open the door."
I knew my daughters were mature enough that I could turn off the child-safety locks in the back doors of my minivan, but I wasn't ready for that milestone yet.
Sometimes it felt like yesterday when I'd introducing a brand-new Eva to her older sister.
How had it been eight years already? All I'd done was blink!
Luckily, my girls didn't seem to mind waiting for me to open the door for them, and soon the three of us were walking across the windswept ground to where their mother had been laid to rest.
"Hi there, Mommy!" Eva said, running the last distance.
She was always the first one to the grave, a tradition that had sort of happened naturally with our little trio.
Addy and I didn't mind it at all. Although I'd never spoken to my eldest about it directly, I got the feeling we shared the same reasoning: Eva had gotten the least time with her mother when she was alive, so she got a little extra time on our visits.
It wasn't enough to make up for it, of course, but it was something we could do for her.
"I missed you! We just had our holiday concert at school and we did the big finale where all the choirs from all the grades sang together and it was really cool and I did good and so did everyone!"
It was rare that Eva got particularly gabby—she always seemed to prefer observing and listening over chatting—but it warmed my heart that she spoke so easily to her mother. At least they would forever share that connection.
"Hi, Mom," Addy said after about a minute or so as she approached the grave.
It wasn't a mausoleum or anything fancy.
The gravestone was just a bit shorter than Eva and had a polished plaque in its center.
My wife wasn't buried there, as she'd been cremated on our ancestral lands per tradition.
No, her favorite book and some of her ashes were buried there, with space for my gravestone and ashes to rest beside her, someday far in the future.
That was the thing about shifters; in the modern age, where there were no continental-scale shifter wars or anything like that, we tended to live quite a long time, with many of us hitting a century or more.
Given our healing abilities, we rarely got sick and weren't at risk for cancer or many of the other diseases that humans had to worry about, so unless I really messed up, I would live for a really long time.
My wife had been… different. She'd been born with a rare blood disorder.
Not only had it made it so she could never shift, but it also meant she wouldn't be long for the world.
But at least she knew it. I knew it. And we had prepared our daughters as best we could.
Since they were old enough to understand, they knew Mommy was very sick and different from other bears.
They'd watched her go from relatively abled, to needing a walker, to needing a wheelchair, to being bed-bound.
We'd all hoped she would make it a bit longer, but that wasn't meant to be. It had been almost a year and a half since my darling had drawn her last breath, and still, I missed her so desperately.
She had been something else.
"Daddy, it's your turn," Eva said, turning and holding out her little hand to me. And yet, as little as it was, it was still so much bigger than it had been the last time her mother had clasped it.
Tears welled in my eyes, but I pushed them down. I would always miss my wife, but I'd promised her I wouldn't let grief rule my life. I'd promised her I would live a happy life.
Easier said than done.
"Hey, honey." It was our own little inside joke—a cheesy one, but it belonged to us.
Even though my wife couldn't shift, she'd still had a bear's love of that sweet nectar of the gods.
She'd have it on toast, on her bagel, on her cereal—really, if there was any excuse to use it, she'd have a jar of it.
And I'd loved that about her.
I still had her last jar of honey, high on a shelf where my girls couldn't see it.
There was only a quarter of it left, and it had that funny little wooden thing in it.
What was it called? A honey dipper, maybe?
Well, whatever it was, even without looking at the label, I knew the jar was a combination of goldenrod and sunflower, which were her favorite summer flowers.
"I miss you, honeybunch. You'd think that with it being the slow season for landscaping, I'd have a lot more time for myself, but I feel like I'm running around more than ever. Holidays, right?"
Sometimes, I swore I could hear the gentle sigh of her response in my head.
"Don't worry," I said with a slight smile. "It's not because I've forgotten the meaning of Christmas. The girls and I have been trying a lot of new activities. Last week, we volunteered at a soup kitchen."
"Daddy got me a step stool so I could stir the soup! B-b-but they told me they don't always have that, did you know that?" Eva said, tracing her fingers over the lettering of her mother's name. "Soup kitchen isn't lateral. It's a meta… meta…"
"Not lateral', Eva," Addy said softly. "It's literal.
And it's not a metaphor. The lady who told you that was incorrect, but she was nice so I didn't say it then.
It's a colloquialism that was established because soup used to be the cheapest way to feed large amounts of homeless people, but now with changes in industry and transport, they're able to serve other things as well. "
I hid my snicker behind my hand. I was well aware that Addy was bright for her age and on the cusp of being diagnosed as potentially a little neurospicy, but sometimes she was just so funny—in a very dry, British way.
Which was strange, because although her mother and I were both quite mixed with heavy Creole roots, neither of us were from the UK.
Though, I did like to use the word lift instead of elevator every once in a while.
"I think I get it," Eva said with a nod. "Everybody makes mistakes." Two more nods. "And that lady was very nice."
"Yes, she was," Addy agreed.
I didn't mind that the two of them had taken over the conversation. After all, I'd had the most time with Zara. Besides, it was easier for me to just talk to her in my head.
We talked and reminisced until Eva's teeth started to chatter. That was my cue, and we said our goodbyes along with promises of coming back soon.
And we would be back soon.
Because although life had moved on, we would always make time for the woman who had brought so much light to our lives.
And we would always be there to wish her a merry Christmas.