And that was when the sadness came

I was just admiring my Christmas decorations, thinking how lovely everything was going to be this Christmas because I had invited some of my best friends to Christmas dinner at my house.

Everything sparkled – the table was laid with my best china and crystal glasses; the turkey and all the trimmings were roasting away in the oven; the Christmas pudding was steaming merrily in a saucepan on the stove;  the vegetables were in the steamer ready to go on when my friends arrived.

I poured a glass of sherry and took a sip or two – medicinal, of course, as I needed to calm down a bit after the panic of getting everything ready on time for my friends’ arrival.

And that was when the sadness came.

I remembered it was exactly at this time one year ago when the phone rang, and I luckily just made it before the answer phone kicked in, or I would have missed John, in a dreadful state, saying they were not coming after all, because Jan was worse.

A month later, we were all mourning together at Jan’s funeral thinking our Christmases would never be the same again, and I wondered what this one would be like without Jan here.

A ten minute tale using “and that was when the sadness came” at our Creative Writing meeting, adapted to a six-sentence story