Over all those years

It was Christmas Eve 2003.

And in what — I realize in retrospect — was an astonishing lack of understanding of the town where I’d arrived mid-afternoon, I drove into Staunton, Virginia, to take my older sister Diana to a holiday dinner.

I hadn’t made advance plans. In my defense, it was partly because my sister’s sudden health needs hadn’t left a lot of time for planning. But more accurately, coming from what was basically a 24-hour-a-day-seven-day-a-week environment in New Jersey, it just never really occurred to me that I’d need them.

I discovered, that Christmas Eve 2003, that the only place still open for that Christmas Eve meal was…

Cracker Barrel.

Yep, I treated my dearly loved sister — who was bravely fighting depression and the after-effects of a medically-induced breakdown (be very wary of steroids, folks — steroid psychosis is real, and devastating!) — to her holiday meal at the local Cracker Barrel just off I-81.

I swore that would never happen again.

Never. Ever. Ever again. Never again would my sister spend a Christmas Eve in a place like Cracker Barrel.

The next year I did my research long in advance. I found a local ski area lodge that had a candlelight Christmas Eve buffet. I made reservations months before Christmas. That candlelight buffet became the new norm, year after year, Christmas Eve after Christmas Eve.

After a couple of scary drives up and down Afton Mountain and Wintergreen Drive in ice and fog so thick it gave pea soup a run for its money, I started making overnight plans to stay at the resort.

There was a year or two or three when I’d pick Diana up in Staunton and we’d drive further south to join another sister for a feast at another fancy place.

Once we stayed overnight near Roanoke, did a whole day of wandering the decorated downtown and shopping at open air markets, in the middle of the most magical fall of the biggest fattest softest snowflakes you’d ever want to see.

We zoomed Christmas Eve dinner during the worst of the pandemic, and we laughed at how much better the turkey cutlet dinners we’d each made were than what had been on that menu at Cracker Barrel all those years before. And we picked up again in person as soon as vaccines were available.

For more than 20 years, that was my Christmas. And it was hers. No Cracker Barrel Christmas Eve, ever again.

For most of those 20 years (COVID permitting), I made that drive — 370 miles one way give or take. I never begrudged it — well, not really — but I’ll confess it was a joy when Christmas 2022 arrived and my drive to Staunton was reduced to just about 60 miles. When instead of an AirBnB Christmas Eve was spent in my new Virginia home.

Diana was the first guest in my new spare bedroom. Her stocking hung on the mantel and was filled overnight. Christmas Day began with pastries and coffee here and ended with dinner at a fine restaurant in Staunton.

It was the same for Christmas 2023.

And for Christmas 2024.

But not for Christmas 2025.

I won’t be driving to Staunton today.

The guest room will be empty tonight.

There won’t be a stocking to fill.

No special pastries for the morning.

No reservations for a Christmas Day feast.

They say the first of everything after a loss is the hardest.

What they don’t say — what nobody can really put into words — is how hard it will be.

But the one thing I keep thinking, the one thing that may get me through this day, is this…

There was never another Cracker Barrel Christmas Eve.

I kept my promise, sis.

I just wish I could keep it one more year.

Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “A promise kept,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/ : posted 24 Dec 2025).