I'm Home

It's Christmas Eve. I'm here in the house where I grew up. Happy sigh. Even after forty-plus years of happy marriage, I still feel the need to come "home" for Christmas.

I don't mean that as a reflection on the home my husband and I have made together, or on him, or his side of our family, or the Christmas traditions we have with our own children. I just always have that "Folger's Coffee Commercial" kind of feeling about Home when it comes to Christmas.

Warning: I'm about to wax tear-jerking emotions all over the page.

Some of the best family times happened at Christmas. And some of the worse.
Christmas of 2002 was the beginning of a season of heartbreak and change. The first Christmas at home without my dad. Ever. He was in the hospital and our whole extended family came home. Waking up on Christmas morning without his "I know what you're getting for Christmas" to tease us one last time before opening presents was ... indescribable. As I watched my mother, who stayed upbeat and smiling, I could not help but think ... change is coming. (So strong, my mother.) But this, this is a first, and more will follow.

We trooped to the hospital where the nursing staff had reserved us a "party room" for the family to gather, complete with a Christmas tree for our gifts for Daddy. They wheeled him in to join us and he looked frail and pale and not at all well. It was the last time I saw him out of a hospital bed.

My sister, my daughter and I had worked for many months on a surprise project for my dad that involved most of the family. A project that we knew would be near and dear to his heart, and I had long anticipated the joy of giving that gift. I could "see" already how his eyes would light up and I knew what his appreciative grin would look like. I could hardly wait. But now, my excitement was dimminished by the brutal reality of Daddy's poor health.

Family was very important to Daddy. I grew up in the house where he was born in a family of Keepers, so there were many family things to cherish and a million past family stories to hear over and over, as well as the memories we made ourselves. Over the months of 2002, the three of us compiled and wrote an anecdotal history of our family. We started by making a list of all our favorite memories, then we contacted members of the family asking for a written contribution from each. We wrote, we edited, we printed; we put it all together into one large binder with a copy for Dad and each member of the family.

On Christmas morning 2002 in a hospital "party room" I got to see that special grin and hear those words of awe and appreciation for our labor of love. He opened other presents, but that one, that heavy tome, sat on his frail knees for a long time, as he turned pages and really realized what we had done. It was an amazing morning, one I can still picture in my head.

Because it was also our last Christmas with him.

On January 2, 2003, (One-Two-Three) Daddy died, without ever seeing home again. During that week between Christmas and New Year's, he read The Book. Each time I visited he had it open on his lap. He also made notes - impressions, typos, comments - and stuck them in the book with Post-It Notes. So like him! It still makes me smile.

Daddy ran out of Time and didn't get to read it all, but there was evidence that he read the most important parts. And enjoyed our effort as well as the memories he relived as he read. He told me once that he came home from the South Pacific after the war with the idea that he'd one day write a book. He never did write a novel, but he completed a long essay on his wartime experiences that was included in a book of area veterans' stories published by the county historical society. We included it in our family book. It was one of the reasons we undertook our writing project; we knew it was the kind of thing he'd appreciate most.

We've made many more sweet memories since that Christmas ten years ago. Mom is 90 years old this year, still in relatively good health, definitely in great spirits and still able to out-shop me. She is hosting the family Christmas Day gathering in our home of so many years. As I write, I am surrounded by the best memories.

And one of the worse.

So hard to believe it's been ten years since Daddy opened that gift. Ten years since we watched that familiar slow grin as he realized what he held in his lap. Ten years.

Someone gave a bit of life advice once that hit me so hard I immediately recognized it as profound truth. "I pray you will get to the point where you can remember more of what you had than what you lost."

I did and I can. I am thankful and I am blessed.

A little over a week ago in Newtown, Connecticut, 20 small children and six adults were brutally gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School. My heart breaks for the families and for the lost soul of a twenty-year old boy who first killed his own mother before shooting out the glass door of the school to gain entrance. A senseless tragedy has become the precursor to what should have been a joyous Christmas filled with church and family and Santa and gap-toothed grins and presents under the tree. We may never understand, may never have the answer to Why.

Words are powerful but in the midst of blinding grief and pain, they are only a drop in the bucket, a grain of sand on a coastline of living and not strong enough to dent the thick wall of disbelief and horror at the loss of a child, a mother, a sister or cousin. Still, this is my prayer for the survivors:

One day, whether ten years or fifty years from this Christmas season, I pray that the memory of your lost ones will bring only smiles to your faces and joy to your hearts and that you, at last, will be able to remember what you had more than what you lost.

Advent - a season of preparation and waiting

Waiting. It's hard.

It matters little what you are waiting for - whether Christmas morning or the proverbial "other shoe to drop."

It's still hard.

I wait to do things. I diagnose it as mild procrastination. Mild, meaning I put some things off until close to the last minute, but I rarely put everything off. The "pleaser" part of my personality won't allow me to totally blow off some people, things, events or chores. I feel compelled to finish (thank you, Mother and Daddy!) the course. But the "selfish" portion quickly cuts to the chase and recognizes allowable  shortcuts; it's a sort of "good enough for what it's for" philosophy that makes it work. And so procrastination is involved.

Not a particularly gratifying trait, huh.

I anticipate. The Brain constantly runs interference ... if they do this, I can do this. Or I'll try that. If he/she says that, I will respond with this. If. If. If. But you get that I don't call this worry, right? In my book it spells "anticipation." And anticipation means "preparation." Not being caught short, i.e. success.

Nothing to brag about there.

And so I wait.
To hear.
To say.
To do.
To think.
To wonder what will be done about this or that.

But this I know. Waiting should be a time of reflection, a time of preparation for whatever Good Thing is to come, not a means to rush a job or assignment just to get it over with and done.

Christmas is approaching. It is not just a holiday where we rejoice over No School or a vacation from work. It is so much more than that.

This time in the church calendar is known as Advent, the time when we anticipate the celebration of our Savior's birth. A time of Hope. Of Love. Of sacred thankfulness that "He loved the World so much." It deserves so much more of me than my usual.

And so THIS YEAR, as we move toward the celebration of that miraculous first Christmas morning, I resolve not to lose sight of the real reason for the season. Not to murmur about a long "to do" list ...  I'm retired; there is plenty of time if I don't procrastinate. Not to moan about crowds of rude shoppers or the traffic ... there are plenty of cheerful smiles and "Merry Christmases" if I look for them. Not to spend more time worrying about gifts than time spent giving ... possible if I keep the true focus of the season close to my heart and mind.

I mean to experience Family. The delight in a child's big eyes, the glee over choosing just the right gift, the appreciation for parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, cousins and friends. I imagine the Father felt the same as He prepared to send His Son.

I mean to enjoy the sights and sounds of Christmas ... even the continual Carols played in all the stores and ditto, the extreme lighting displays. Even the shopping, the gift wrapping, the viewing of "White Christmas" and "Holiday Inn" (not It's a Wonderful Life, however) again, the Hallmark channel, and the few Christmas variety shows on TV these days.  Yes, even the minimum cooking and necessary baking (ha!) I will do. And Santa ( I still believe!). All these things, while not always wonderful in and of themselves, are beautiful, family memory makers. Something I will cherish against the inevitable change and loss in the years to come. I imagine the Father shakes His head over His children's silliness, but loves us anyway.

I mean to absorb the events at church that mark Christ's birth  ... the giving, the Advent messages, the youth programs, the hymns and special music on Sunday morning, the fellowship of a church family experiencing joy and sorrow for each other, the blessed peace of the Good News ... and allow them to cover my soul. I imagine the Father smiling tenderly as we honor Him.

This year I will enjoy the waiting, the advent of Christmas. And I hope you will, too.

Merry Christmas y'all!