Just One More Christmas

Just One More Christmas

Christmas should be with family. He wondered if the only family that mattered to him would be here. He had watched for all of his thirteen years his unhappy mother struggling to survive by whatever means possible.

He had never questioned whether or not she loved him. She always made sure he was taken care of by someone, many times sending him to stay with one of her many relatives. There were lots of people in a very large and sometimes bulky family. He always felt separate and different from them.  

Crisis was a part of the fabric of their lives stretching their bonds and snapping the young teenager and his mother apart when the drama and chaos went too far. When calm and sobriety took hold, even for a short time, they were together again. They didn’t stay together for long. With each crisis, the elasticity of family bonds became thinner and thinner, always at the verge of breaking.  

In his heart he knew – he wanted to know – that this Christmas would be different.  But why would he even think that it would? His mother had been through other treatment centres, had been going to AA for 20 years and had seen many psychiatrists. Why would it be different this year? He wanted to live without the fear of the next drunk, where they would live next or whether she would die in a bar fight!  

He brought his thoughts back to the present, to where he was standing.  Where was he? When his thoughts raced away with worry, he could have been anywhere - at school, in this new apartment or in a crowd of friends or family.

*******

“I know my son must hate me”.  

Having stepped out of one more treatment centre a scant two months before, a young woman tried desperately to quell the rising panic.  She had felt this panic before. Every single Christmas. Along with the panic was overwhelming guilt. This was supposed to be a joyous time of year. But she had no job, no money and no family here in this big city. Going back over all the old times, ashamed that there were so many times lost to her memory, her friends at the bar crowded noisily into her mind. They would be her family. They had been her family.  She could have music and laughter and wouldn’t be able to think about anything or anyone. She could even share just one Christmas drink with them. Just one......

She wouldn’t have to think about anyone. But she looked at the picture of her son she carried with her always. To herself she whispered 'Oh my son, my son.' 

From the time he was a precious baby and she was a new mom, frightened and only nineteen years old, she had loved him to her very core. Now her son, a skinny thirteen year old, was still her shining star.  The love they shared seemed to be the only thing in her life that was truly clean, strong and unbreakable.  

It was time to try once more to be the mom that she always had wanted, and had wanted to be. Taking a deep breath, looking around the empty apartment for something – anything that she could make Christmas-like, she spied a roll of tinfoil among the few kitchen things she did have left. Her many years of uncontrolled drinking had not only taken its toll on her mind, her soul and her body but had left her virtually without the stuff of life. Now sober and just hanging on, all those things were just gone. She remembered the tinfoil in her hand. What was she going to do with it? Christmas. My son. The walls of the empty apartment beckoned to her and in her desperation she began to spread the bright and shiny foil on the wall.

Later, when her son came in from school he saw the only Christmas tree that his mom could get for him. Flat and shiny on the wall. His head didn’t know what to do. His heart practically burst with love for this mom that always, always had loved him – drunk or sober.

******

Christmas Day arrived. No Christmas presents, no smell of cooking from the kitchen. Christmas dinner would, maybe, be in the local coffee shop if it was open. There was no community for them. They knew so few in the city and this time was sacred to each family.

From within, the little family of two heard the cheerful noise of guests arriving in the apartment building. Expecting a quiet Christmas for just themselves, mother and son were startled at the loud knock on their door. Do these merry makers have the wrong apartment? But the voice was familiar. The laughter, not the laughter of a stranger, sounded like her cousin?  

The young woman had absolutely not one bite of Christmas dinner to share with them, no presents to give them! Nervously, but with great politeness she opened the door to greet them. Her cousin and a friend burst and bustled into the tiny apartment accompanied by wonderful aromas of Christmas dinner. They had brought their Christmas feast and fun with them.

******

This story has not ended.  Speaking with this friend last week, I asked her to recall that Christmas for me. She now can remember many Christmases, always with her son and now also with her four grandchildren. Of all the memories of that Christmas she remembers these things with great humility and gratitude. A family Christmas was the greatest gift that she received on that day. Today she continues to share those Christmas lessons with her many friends and family throughout each year and is still humbled and grateful for all that she does have. 

April, 2005

“Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas

is that we first make believe a thing is so, 

and lo, it presently turns out to be so.”

~ Stephen Leacock

*Based on a true story