Remember Christmas Well

When the last gift has been unwrapped with ribbons, bows and shredded paper strewn across the living room floor and the kids have identified their favorite new toy, I’ve taken to the habit of stopping them in mid play and making a statement: “We have been blessed with a wonderful Christmas. Remember this Christmas well, because not all Christmases may be this nice.”

They stare at me with a disbelieving gaze and return to their post-Santa business at hand. As I watch them play, I think about that year our Christmas was not so nice.

On Christmas Eve, 1991, my wife, Cheri, and I were living in a small, second floor apartment and taking down our Christmas tree. We had decided to give up; the struggle was too much. It was becoming harder and harder to keep up the expected joy to the world. So, we didn’t.

Just three weeks earlier we had taken Cheri’s mother to a hospital in Philadelphia. She was slurring her words and had an odd affect about her. We thought she might be having a stroke. We learned the problem was not a stroke at all. It was breast cancer with metastases in her bones and brain. By Christmas Eve the treatments were merely palliative.

We broke a lot of Christmas balls that year perhaps because we were in a rush, perhaps not. We were angry. It didn’t seem fair. Cheri had lost her father when she was a freshman in college and my father had succumbed to cancer just that past May. Now we were told to make home hospice plans.

Our Christmas Eve visit with Cheri’s mother lasted only about an hour. We would have stayed longer had she not been so sedated from the pain medication. She never once woke up, never knew we were there. We each kissed her forehead goodbye and wished her a merry Christmas.

Cheri and I spent the night at my mother’s. Christmas morning we opened gifts that my mother gave us. We ate an early dinner and then drove to Cheri’s mother’s house. She had left word with one of Cheri’s aunts that we were to pick up Christmas gifts that she had gotten us. Cheri’s mother would begin her Christmas shopping during the after-Christmas sales. We rummaged through the apartment that had not one decoration. Another one of Cheri’s mother’s Christmas rituals was to decorate her small basement apartment abundantly. We loaded the gifts, some wrapped, some still in department store bags, into the truck of my car and drove to Philadelphia to spend the rest of the day with Cheri’s mother.

When we entered the hospital room, Cheri’s mother was alert yet dazed. She had difficulty focusing and often drifted off for several minutes to half an hour. We opened our gifts and made an effort to look happy. It was so hard to unwrap a pair of matching monogrammed hooded jackets and look at this women dying in the hospital bed and say thank you, we love it, we’ll wear them when we take walks on the boardwalk together. It was even harder when Cheri slipped the jeweled watch on her mother’s wrist and both began to cry. “I love it,” I remember her saying looking at the watch in the florescent light above her bed. Somehow we kept smiling.

We didn’t leave until her latest dose of medication put her out and the nurse told us that she would probably sleep through the night.

Cheri and I packed most of the evening and went to bed early. The next few days would be very busy. We had to have our new apartment set up near Cheri’s mother’s home within a week because she would be transported back home on New Year’s Day.

She died eleven days later.

This year, after all the carols, the candy, cakes and pies, after all the visits, the gifts, cards and greetings, realize the blessing you had this year. Remember this Christmas well because not all Christmases may be this nice.