How does emotion work in the story "A Christmas Memory"?

This excellent short story is rich in sensory detail which
creates images, which, in turn, create the mood of the story, or the emotions that the
writer wants us to feel. When considering your question you will want to think about
these issues - how does the author create mood in his story? One of the most poignant
aspects here is the juxtaposition or the placing next to each other of memories of
extreme happiness with indications of the future sadness that time will bring. Consider
this example:

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The wind is blowing, and nothing will do till
we've run to a pasture below the house where Queenie has scooted to bury her bone (and
where, a winter hence, Queenie will be buried, too.) There, plunging through the
healthy, waist-high grass, we unreel our kites, feel them twitching at the string like
skyfish as they swim into the wind. Satisfied, sun-warmed, we sprawl in the grass and
peel satsumas and watch our kites cavort. Soon I forget the socks and hand-me-down
sweater. I'm as happy as if we'd already won the fifty-thousand-dollar Grand Prize in
that coffee-naming
context.

Note how this
passage creates a mood of absolute nostalgia as the narrator looks back to his childhood
Christmas memory as an adult and remembers all the happy amazing moments - the feeling
of the sun on his skin, the tug of the kites on their hands and the emotion of
happiness. However, the relentless passing of time is also alluded to, and Queenie's
mortality adds a discordant, sad note to the passage.

Of
course, if you want to find more examples of sadness or of deep loss, consider this
passage:

Life
separates us. Those Who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so
follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer
camps. I have a new home too. But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and
there I never go.

Here the
way that time "separates" us and takes us away from our "home" is sadly evoked, as
descriptions such a "bugle-blowing prisons" clearly show us how the narrator feels about
his separation. Nostalgia, it seems, is just for a specific period of our childhood - we
will always look back, cherish and ponder those golden memories even as the mortality of
life pushes us ever-more away from them.