The Thanksgiving/Christmas season has always been a special time of year for me, a time of family, appreciation, and generosity. As a child, I knew that I would see grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins that I might not see for months. My mom would make her famous potato salad and pumpkin pies if we were going to a relative’s house for Thanksgiving. If my father was parked too far from the rest of the family for us to make the trip “home”, we still had “his” plates of him plus turkey or ham. Christmas meant something special to each of us children. Even when I was old enough to realize that we were financially poor, I knew that somehow, my parents would have a gift for me, as well as gifts from “Santa” for my much younger brother and sister. The most important part of the vacation was the fact that we were together as a family.
Little did I know when Robert and I got married that my husband came from such a different background. For his parents, both Thanksgiving and Christmas were just days on the calendar. They may or may not have a more quality “Sunday” meal than every day, but nothing extra happened. Over the years, he moved into my way of thinking. The poor man really didn’t have much of a choice. Thanksgiving and Christmas became as important to him as it was to me, a time for our family to celebrate and be together.
However, the pain tried to destroy our holiday joy too soon. On December 19, 1968, our daughter Regina Louise was born, small and frail. On the morning of December 20, she died herself, leaving behind a grieving family. I have indirectly written about this situation in other stories, but the pain never completely goes away. Although I don’t realize the date, December 20 of each year wraps me in a cloak of sadness. However, I hold on to the desire to make Christmas special for my family, a time for family.
Sometime on Christmas night in 1986, my father died alone. He had to work at the hospital on Christmas Eve and Christmas night on the 3-11 shift. My mother came to the Edmond area where my brother and I lived. In fact, she stayed in the city with my brother and his children. Christmas Eve, I woke up during the night to the sound of sleet hitting the roof. Spontaneously, the thought crossed my mind: “My dad will die alone, just like his father did.” I dismissed my crazy idea, rolled over and went back to sleep. The next morning, my brother carefully brought mom and her children to our house. The roads were covered with drifts of snow on a bed of ice. Our youngest son and his wife were unable to attend dinner because the roads were worse to the west and far north of the state. After dinner, our eldest son and his wife headed to his parents’ house, but they called us to say that the roads were dangerous.
After my father got off work that Christmas night, he went to a dark and lonely house. He died sometime after getting ready for bed, or after waking up during the night. Another shade of sadness for the holidays.
My grandmother, my mother’s mother, died three days after Christmas 1993, with all her children by her side. We helped my mother pay for her trip to California a few days before Grandma passed away, but we didn’t have the funds for me to go. My mother also told me that my children and my husband needed me with them for Christmas.
About two weeks before Thanksgiving in 1996, my mother had a stroke. I sat next to her those days that we were given to say goodbye. She died the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Her funeral was the day after Thanksgiving, nine years ago this week. At least she no longer feels pain. However, the day after her death, my ex-son-in-law stole two of my grandchildren. We don’t know where they are or how they are. The hole left by her absence continues to grow with the passing of the years.
The season of pain has once again arrived, but I will fight it. I will not let the feeling of loss take away my remaining joy. I will still be able to be with my husband of almost forty-four years. On Thanksgiving we will have dinner with the youngest and his family, and there will be his in-laws, close friends, as well as our older granddaughters and his families. Christmas plans are not made yet, but we will be together and see some of our family. Love will remain, and memories.
How sad that this season of good news is also our season of sorrow. God bless us all and give us a deep and lasting sense of comfort and happiness that overcomes the pain.