Nic Narrates

Every year about this time I think of that Christmas years ago; the excitement of having a houseful of family, the first Christmas for my family in years that an actual child would open presents- my then five year-old cousin. There was not one, but two Christmas trees that year. Not one, but two sets of grandparents. We were all together one last time before my parents moved away.

Oddly, I read the obituaries that morning in the paper leftover from days before, thinking how sad it must be to lose a loved one at the holidays. There never is a good time really, but then there’s something so melancholy about the whole thing when all the world is joyous and warm and welcoming. I never told anyone I did that or thought that at the time and now, looking back, I can hardly believe the damned irony of it.

It was Ave Maria that did me in at his funeral five days later as I knelt in church next to my dad and grandma. My dad had lost his father, and my grandma lost the man who’d been at her side since she was fifteen. Moments before, I had climbed the altar steps to talk about how he sent me cards every month for four years while I was away at college, how he bought a computer just so he could send me emails each day, how he always said “Thank you for being my granddaughter” as though he never expected to have one, let alone two. But of all his grandchildren, I was special to him.

Everyone knew it in our family, and everyone knew it in church that morning- I was his favorite. It wasn’t fair, but no one could do anything about it. Favorite or not, he gave to everyone just the same. The night before he died, he delivered food baskets to families in need, then decorated the very church he’d have his funeral in later that week. He had the biggest heart, and it was his heart that failed him in the driveway of my parent’s house on Christmas morning.

I was one of the lucky ones though. With everyone rushing around, scattered and uncertain what to do; I walked to the car where he sat in pain and praying, gave him water and a kiss on the cheek, and told him “I love you.” I’ll never know if he heard me, but there’s peace in knowing I got the chance to say it and took it. To say it one last time, “just in case” I must have thought.

By the time I got to the hospital he was gone. My dad yelled at the doctors in the hallway for not trying hard enough, my mother looked lost and cried in a corner, my grandmother asked in her shocked state about “senior discounts” on funeral arrangements, and I sat down quietly beside him. I knew he wasn’t there anymore- and I realize how morbid it must sound now- but I held his hand as the warmth drained from it, even once it was cold. And I knew it was done.

I think of that day and those moments often. I remember everything, every detail and conversation and feeling. I remember how special I used to feel, how my grandpa gave me the love that my dad simply couldn’t and still can’t. And I still feel a loss. Who am I special to now? Who will I ever be special to like that again?

Every year we go to church at Christmas and my parents and grandmother cry. Every year I sit next to them, silently adoring the Christmas music I used to love singing but no longer can. And when Ave Maria plays, I admire it for its beauty, and hate it for the good bye it signifies.

Filed under: a thing of beauty, childhood, family matters, i heart Christmas, in memory, letting go, quiet desperation, things people say by Nic