The year 2012 had been a long and difficult one. One of three, in fact. It had been three years since my mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer and, ever since, I, my dad and older brother had been living in the hospital-filled limbo so familiar to families of cancer patients – life dictated by chemo cycles, the endless bedside waiting, the guilty mental preparation for the inevitable.

Christmas in the Kalia household had always been a major occasion, though, and something to look forward to. Even though we are Hindus – our roots are in India – we had embraced the festival’s feasting and gift-giving. My mum would usually invite her two siblings and their ever-expanding families for turkey with all the trimmings, a meal she would spend days preparing while my kitchen-inept dad would look on in awe, faithfully laying the table and clearing dishes. That table would hold at least 15 others, all laughing and stuffing themselves – the usual disagreements that characterised family gatherings strangely absent. Since she had fallen ill, though, Christmas had morphed from a day of celebration of our big immigrant family’s resilient togetherness to a day fearful of absence. Which Christmas would be Mum’s last, I would wonder, and how could I make that one count more than the others?

Her last Christmas was December 2012. The cancer had gone into remission in 2011, only to come back nine months later – and this time much worse, requiring major surgery that would keep her in hospital over the Christmas period. I was struggling to come to terms with the news, having just moved out of home to university, where I should have been drinking myself into new friendships, but instead was only thinking about whether she would make it to the end of the year. I was spending my life on trains, coming home every weekend to make the most of the time we had together.

December came, and with it the usual stresses of Christmas parties and present-buying. I, for a reason I will never understand, decided to get my mum a copy of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love – an emotionally punishing read at the best of times, never mind after five-hour surgery. It was obvious that we wouldn’t be hosting on Christmas Day this year. Instead, I awoke that morning with fizzing butterflies in my stomach – not the usual excitement, but a rising dread for the day to come, one that I knew I would have to grit my teeth to get through. We went straight to the hospital, where through a tangle of tubes and beneath a wheezing oxygen mask my mum lay, uncomfortable, but happy to see us.

I gave her her present – immediately realising it was a useless choice – and then the three of us sat beside her for what felt like hours. There were no decorations in the intensive care ward, no Christmas music, just other families quietly keeping vigil and the heroic staff working through their routines. This was just another day; the tantalising magic of Christmas had disappeared.

“What are you all looking so sad for?” my mum asked us. She was adamant that we had some semblance of a Christmas Day, so my brother and I were sent off to our auntie’s for a sombre meal, avoiding talk of our mum lest it ruin the charade of turkey, gravy and torn tissue paper hats. My dad wouldn’t leave her side, though, and stayed until the nurses sent him home.

Ammar with his mother in around 2011. Photograph: Provided by Ammar Kalia

It was heart-crushing stuff. “Is this what all Christmases will be like now?” I remember thinking. Yet, as we were leaving my auntie’s to face a night alone in a house that was feeling increasingly cold and empty, my phone rang. It was my best friend, Keerut, whom I have known since I was four, when we bonded in the playground over a shared love of Michael Jackson and Linkin Park. He invited us all over to his family’s place for a second Christmas meal, as they were eating late.

Your best friends will be there for you unreservedly and unconditionally. That was something I didn’t realise I’d had

That call was the faintest glimmer of hope in that bitterly cold day. I told my brother, and we set off in the car, arriving 30 minutes later to a warm house, places set for us and glasses thrust into our hands. Again, we didn’t speak much of my mum – we all knew her absence was the reason for us being there – but, instead, we got drunk and played games and were force-fed another Christmas dinner. I can’t remember what we ate or what games we played, but I remember laughing until I cried and feeling relieved that was something I could still do; that it was possible to feel some happiness even in the most brutally sad times. We stayed over and when we woke up the next day, for a moment it felt as if things were OK again.

I realised that in the more than 20 years Keerut and I had been friends, I had taken that friendship for granted. In Indian culture, there is a huge emphasis placed on the importance of family, the assumption that blood is a bond that will never be broken. But as any human being will tell you, friendships can also be for life. Your best friends will be there for you unreservedly and unconditionally, and that was something I didn’t realise I’d had all along.

That was the last Christmas I spent with Mum but it was also the beginning of a new tradition. This year will be the seventh Christmas without her, and no doubt it will be a day full of the sadness, dread and possible happiness that anyone bereaved will experience, but it will also be another year when we have Christmas lunch with my auntie and then head to Keerut’s for the evening. It may be a difficult time of year, but that makes it all the more important to acknowledge the support – the friends – that I do have and whom I would like to thank for bringing some excitement back to my life. Theirs is a presence I will not forget, just as I will remember my mum.