BRYONY GORDON: How I discovered the true meaning of Christmas… by canceling it and taking my daughter on vacation to Dubai with my grieving friend

I’m lying on a lounge chair in 28 degree heat, my best friend Laura to my right and hot white sand under my feet. The turquoise waters of Dubai dazzle on the horizon.

Apparently it’s Christmas, although we wouldn’t know it: not from the bright blue sky, not from the extravagant virgin mojitos, not from the vigorous game of beach volleyball our children play with the kids’ club team at our five-star resort. .

They just finished making necklaces and bracelets, and inform us that they’ve also been decorating cupcakes and cookies, although I think by “decorate” what they really mean, given their energy, is “eat it.”

Later, we’ll probably give in to their demands to take a pedalo out to the Persian Gulf, but first: a refreshing pineapple sorbet, followed by facials at the hotel spa.

Laura and I have promised each other that our Christmas gift to each other will be an afternoon in the luxurious hammam, while the children have their hair braided and their faces painted under the constant supervision of paid professionals.

It’s not very festive, but frankly, neither of us would mind a stuffed stocking.

We are here at the Anantara resort on Palm in Dubai because Laura and I have made the decision this year to cancel Christmas. Bah bullshit, just call me Scrooge (with a sarong).

There will be no roast turkey, no festive jumpers, and no memories of last year.

Christmas carols have been replaced by tropical bird squawks, discussions with family over the best way to baste the turkey have been replaced by enveloping body treatments at the Anantara’s elegant spa.

It’s all a far cry from our normal Christmases in our respective homes in London – 4,340 miles to be exact.

But we do it for a good reason. In October, the worst happened when Laura’s lovely husband, Alex Cole, died. He had been diagnosed with bowel cancer in March this year, this terrible, terrible disease shattered life as his family knew it in a devastatingly short space of time.

Alex died just weeks after his 43rd birthday, a fortnight before his youngest child, Indigo, turned three.

A couple of weeks after that, Laura and Alex’s youngest son, Jules, turned 9, and almost a month later, their oldest, Teddy, turned 11.

Laura surpassed all of these milestones with her typical dazzling brilliance, throwing parties and gifts and making sure the Cole family children had as “normal” birthdays as possible, given the dire circumstances.

There were Nerf guns, go-kart racing, and freshly baked birthday cakes. But during those terrible days after Alex’s death, as I sat on her couch holding her, she confessed to me that Christmas seemed like too big a milestone to bear this year.

She didn’t want to hear people talk about the most wonderful time of the year, not when she was going through the most terrible time of her life.

Flickering lights, festive gatherings, people wishing you a “merry” Christmas… this year, all of these should be avoided, as far as humanly possible.

So we came up with a plan to go to the least Christmassy place on the planet. The kids had a wish list, with strict instructions of what was needed from a destination: it had to be really hot, with lots of water parks, a variety of sushi restaurants, and lots of fun things to do.

With a three-year-old in tow, we didn’t feel like traveling across too many time zones. That’s why we are here in Dubai, at the Anantara, where there are many water parks, the temperature is pleasant and the only turkey we will eat will be the delicious club sandwich by the pool.

There are many people, obsessed with Christmas and all its rituals, who would never think of abandoning festive traditions.

But anyone who has experienced grief and loss will understand how difficult this time of year can be, and its customs somehow highlight everything that no longer exists.

And I would do anything for Laura, just like she would do for me.

We met almost 25 years ago, through mutual friends, having grown up close to each other in west London: me in Chiswick, Laura in Ealing.

And although we no longer see many of those people from our teenage years, we have stood by each other, through thick and thin.

I remember when we met we immediately “got” each other, bonding over late-night games of Mario Kart and drunken bike rides to the local kebab shop for fries smothered in mayonnaise.

We spent our 20s on each other’s floors, singing, dancing and crying over the various questionable men we seemed to attract when she began her career as a nurse and I as a journalist.

Despite our bad luck with the boys, we laughed a lot. We were messy, chaotic, often scraping together whatever money we had to fly to the south of France, where we spent holidays in his grandmother’s static caravan living on baguettes, beer and wine.

Then, when we were in our early 30s, a miracle happened! After many years of pitying our apparently terrible taste in men, we both met and settled down with two lovely people around the same time: me with Harry and Laura with Alex, a strategist.

I got pregnant in the summer of 2012, and when Laura took me shopping at Zara Kids on the first day of my maternity leave the following spring, she confessed that she and Alex had also started trying for a baby.

She found out she was pregnant with Teddy just two days before I gave birth to Edie, at the hospital where she worked no less.

She was the first visitor, besides my family, and in the winter of 2013 they welcomed Teddy into the world. Jules followed two years later, and Indigo arrived in winter 2021.

Our families quickly became one, really. For my daughter, an only child, Laura and Alex’s children are the closest thing she has to siblings.

We went out together at least three times a year, whether weekends to the Cotswolds or entire summers to a ruined barn in central France, where Alex and Harry taught the children to scuba dive while Laura and I read books and made. tours. local supermarkets (a favorite vacation activity).

We were so close that we joked that we’d like to form a commune together, probably somewhere in the Cornish wilderness, where we also spent a lot of time.

They were also there for my bad times. Almost my entire adult life I had struggled with addictions: to alcohol and then to cocaine, which I used as a crutch and mask for the OCD, which I had suffered from since I was a child.

In 2017, I knew I needed help and went to rehab. Shortly before I left, the Coles took me, Harry and Edie to the Cotswolds, where they made sure I stayed away from alcohol and roasted me, keeping me safe until they could admit me to the alcohol treatment centre. .

Despite the low points I had fallen to, they never judged me or abandoned me, and when I came out that Christmas, they were there with open arms, loving me unconditionally.

During lockdowns, when things first opened up, we missed each other so much that we would drive to a deserted beach in Dorset and ‘crash’ each other for a few hours so we could pretend we were on holiday and drive back to London. , gritty but happy at the end of the day.

In August we were all together in Cornwall, trying our favorite Viennese flavors and building sand castles.

So it was never in doubt that we would be there for both of us during those terrible, dark times of early fall.

In the last weeks of Alex’s life, he worked from the hospital waiting room, feeding Laura and taking her for walks, crying with her when it became clear that the worst was about to happen.

Along with a group of other friends, we settled in the courtroom’s visiting room, where we remained until the bitter end, forming that community of love for a man who meant so much to so many. On that unimaginably horrible day, as a small group of us drove her home, I promised Laura that I would not be separated from her.

Harry and I had also promised Alex that we would take care of his wife and children, and that is a promise we will never, ever break. That’s partly why Harry stayed in London this year; Yes, she has to work over Christmas, but she felt as much as I did that this had to be, more than anything, a girls’ vacation.

It was not a difficult conversation to have: the commune simply took action.

Plus, Harry and I feel it’s a small sacrifice given everything Laura and the kids have been through.

Meanwhile, Edie is just thrilled to be spending two weeks in the sun with her best friends.

Harry is spending Christmas Day with his dad and cousins ​​and, judging by the FaceTimes we’ve taken from the beach, he’s making the most of the series of free passes this has given him: playing golf, drinking pints at the local pub, and watching boxing late into the night with friends. We had a little family Christmas last week, before meeting Laura and the kids at Gatwick and heading off to Dubai.

Here, Christmas is more of a concept than a celebration. In the lobby of Anantara there is a tree almost as big as the Burj Khalifa skyscraper and a life-size gingerbread house made from real gingerbread, while someone, despite the heat, has quite bravely dressed up in a Santa Claus suit.

But if you focus on the sea and the sun, it’s pretty easy to ignore, and certainly much easier than being in the rain-soaked, windswept UK, where the light doesn’t come out until mid-morning, and everything goes submerged again. in the dark shortly after tea.

Here we can start the day with an iced coffee and swim in the sea, and end it with a non-alcoholic sunset on the beach.

All children will receive stockings on Christmas Day and there will be a lavish buffet for us all to feast on. But it will include sushi and salad, which sound much better than sprouts.

We’re spending Christmas Eve in Nobu and Boxing Day at a water park, and there’s talk of renting a boat and exploring Palm.

None of this, of course, changes what happened. But it does take everyone away from reality for two weeks, at least until early January, when we will return. In the midst of unbearable pain, I hope this provides some blessed relief.

And in a strange way, isn’t this what Christmas should really be about? Not the gifts and the tattoos and the twinkling lights, but the gift of unconditional love, of being there for the people you consider family.

I remember, over the summer, Laura sent me a WhatsApp in which she apologized for appearing to only send messages with bad news.

“I’m afraid that’s not what friendship is about,” I replied. ‘I can’t just pick the good parts and ignore the bad. We are here for each other in everything: in the sunny highlands and in the dark valleys.

I meant it, and I still do. And as we navigate the next few days together, I know there’s no place I’d rather be this Christmas… and, more importantly, no person I’d rather spend it with.

Have you ever felt like life is a little…too much? Bestselling author and journalist Bryony Gordon is here to ditch the shame and dive headfirst into the trickier parts of life. Look for The Life of Bryony wherever you get your podcasts.