The Christmas Card from Beyond

 The first Christmas after my grandpa passed was… weird. I was 17, still trying to figure out how to handle all the emotions that came with losing someone who had been such a huge part of my life. Grief is messy, and honestly, I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just… didn’t. I shoved it down, pretended I was fine, and tried to go through the motions of the holiday like everything was normal.

But it wasn’t normal.

That Christmas morning, my brother and I were sitting on the floor, tearing into presents like we always did, when something caught our eye. Tucked deep within the branches of the Christmas tree were two envelopes. Neither of us had put them there, and judging by the confused look on my brother’s face, neither had he.

I grabbed the one with my name on it, and the second I saw the handwriting, my stomach dropped.

It was his. My grandpa’s handwriting, clear as day.

I just sat there, staring at it, my hands shaking. My brother nudged me, urging me to open it, so I did. Inside was a simple note—just four words.

"Love you, Scooter."

My heart felt like it stopped. That was his nickname for me. No one else called me that, ever.

But here’s the thing—my grandpa had passed away in August, months before Christmas. And in all the years we had celebrated together, he had never given me a Christmas card. Not once.

I turned to my mom, holding up the card, expecting some kind of explanation. Maybe she had found it somewhere and saved it for me? Maybe it was something he had written before he passed? But when I asked, she just shook her head, her face going pale.

“That’s not possible,” she muttered.

She refused to talk about it after that. Brushed it off like it never happened.

But my brother? He remembers. He saw it too.

For years, I kept that card tucked away. And there was even a picture—one of me holding the card that morning, my face still filled with shock. It sat in a photo album for a long time.

Then, about nine years ago, something changed. I finally started dealing with the grief I had buried for so long. I let myself feel it.

And then, one day, the picture just… vanished.

I tore through every old album, searched every box of keepsakes. It was just gone. Like it had never existed in the first place.

But I know it did. My brother knows it did.

And every Christmas, I still think about that card. About those four little words. And I wonder if maybe, just maybe, it was my grandpa’s way of reminding me that even though he was gone… he wasn’t really gone.