I burst into tears the first time I hear “I’ll be home for Christmas” every year. And I can’t stop from tearing  up every other time it plays in a department store, coffee shop, or anytime I see that damn Salvation Army commercial. It takes me back to my grandpa’s funeral as his recorded voice echoed the song through the church days before Christmas, and although we knew he wouldn’t be home for Christmas, we could feel him all around us.

This year I won’t be home for Christmas for the first time in 27 years and it has made me extra nostalgic. It takes me back to how we spent every Christmas when we were kids, when life was simple and we were spoiled. Memories of my grandparents will always be what Christmas is to me. Even when I start my own traditions; no one can touch Christmas at Grandma’s.

Every year we would get two Christmases. The day would begin with me crawling into my sister’s bed and we’d keep each others heads from spinning off thinking about all the presents that were to come. We learned to make coffee just so Christmas could start a few minutes earlier and would spend the entire morning bouncing around and opening presents. Our household traditions were Mom’s fresh vitabra, Randy Newman’s Christmas CD, and a giant beast of a dog who was as excited about unwrapping presents as we were.

But the main event of the day was Christmas at Grandma’s, which would begin weeks, even months, in advance. We would make frequent visits to help decorate and make her signature cookies, the cookies that would end up as crumbs in my dad’s beard. My grandma insisted on making enough cookies to feed all of their friends, neighbors, Safeway employees, and anyone else who she would befriend during the holiday season. The mountain of cookie tins would take over the garage until there was little room for the car. We would bake, eat, wrap presents and carefully decorate the tree with nothing but gold. Christmas in their house kind of just glowed all around. It was over the top and beautiful, just like my grandma.

Christmas afternoon would be a spectacle of flying wrapping paper as we opened an unnecessary amount of presents, but to Grandma more was more. “Oh, forget it. You hate it” and “I kept all the receipts, it won’t hurt my feelings” (although it would), were  familiar Dorisms heard all day in combination with the classic, “Eddie, make me a drink.” At his cue, Grandpa would rock himself in his old brown chair until he catapulted up with Dad’s help and would shuffle across the carpet to make Grandma’s highball. We would set Grandpa up with a present occasionally and after he had neatly torn off the paper and carefully balled it up, he would say, “What do we have here?” and would  inspect it until we gave him his next. We would sit around as Grandma ran the show and when she stopped talking for a moment we could hear Grandpa quietly singing along to the Christmas music. We would eat and open presents for hours until it got dark and nothing was left but mounds of wrapping paper, leaning towers of presents, and belly aches.

Every year was the same production and Grandma never slowed down. Over the years, the meatballs became questionably undercooked and the presents became a bit more unusual, but she put on the Christmas that we grew up with until her last. We have tried to recreate all the traditions but the food will never be as excessive, the cookies will never be as perfect,  and I don’t think there will ever be a hostess quite like Doris. I miss her hair, the way she smelled of Cover Girl blush and the Chantilly toilet water that she would ask us to buy her every Christmas. I miss the little dance that she’d do to make us smile and will even miss her attitude, but my Dad and I carry that on. I wish I could have shared a Christmas cocktail with her, I wish I could still listen to Grandpa singing, and that I could comb his hair back for him one last time. But more than anything, I wish I could have everyone in my life, and those still to come into my life, to have had a chance to meet them.

I feel so lucky to have grown up with so much love  and couldn’t have imagined two greater people to have helped raise us. I know that my sister and I really were their world. When I was little I couldn’t imagine anything changing. I couldn’t imagine Grandma not calling every hour, not spoiling us, not being there for all of our important moments, or imagine not spending Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa’s. We sometimes drive by their house, with the same hedges trimmed a little bit differently, and I know they’re no longer there but I can still feel them. I can still see us loading the car up with garbage bags of gifts on Christmas night, while Grandma and Grandpa stand at the door and wave goodbye after another Christmas matinee.  And dad honks once so Grandma can shut the door and we drive away from the warmest and most loving place I will ever know, a place I still visit every Christmas, if only in my dreams.