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A Prime Rib Christmas

Situations change, which means that holidays change

John I. Carney
4 min readDec 20, 2024
A slab of rare prime rib on a plate, with a small ramekin of horseradish sauce and a parsley garnish.
GRALISTAIR, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I live by myself. I’ve never been married. My solitary existence is my own fault, to the extent that “fault” is an appropriate word, which it probably isn’t. I get lonely sometimes, but it also has advantages, and at this point, at 62, I’ve become so accustomed to it that I wouldn’t know what to do if you gave me a girlfriend, or if I were forced to share an apartment. I’m just … me.

Up until 2023, Christmas Eve, and Christmas morning, meant driving across town to my parents’ home. We lost Mom to cancer in 2010; since then, Dad has lived by himself. I’m the only one of my siblings (there are four of us) still living in our home county, which meant I was the closest geographically to Dad. In the spring of 2023, my siblings and I made the difficult decision to put Dad in memory care, after a difficult couple of years of going from crisis to crisis.

Last year, the first Christmas since Dad had been in memory care, my sister (who lives a couple of hours away) and I visited him together on Christmas Eve and again on Christmas Day; the Christmas Day visit included some of her kids and grandkids. My two brothers made their own visits close to the holiday.

It was a strange feeling to be in my apartment all evening on Christmas Eve and not to rush over…

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John I. Carney
John I. Carney

Written by John I. Carney

Author of “Dislike: Faith and Dialogue in the Age of Social Media,” available at http://www.lakeneuron.com/dislike

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