Countdown to Christmas 2025…Day 8
Today we remember my mom. Not the anniversary of her birth, but the anniversary of her last morning on planet earth.
She had had a multiple stroke the Wednesday before Thanksgiving that year. A stay in the hospital led to a ride across town to a nursing care facility that we hoped she would never have to enter.
While she was still conscious, I asked the hospital nurse if there was any way she could return to her little apartment at Tanglewood Village and I would secure around the clock care.
No.
With her flat stroke-ridden voice, she released me from any guilt and said she knew she was dying, she knew I would only do what was best for her, she thanked me and she closed her eyes to rest.
That was our last audible conversation.
I got the call in the wee hours of the morning on the 8th and went and sat by her bed for a while. At some point, I felt released to go. I told her I loved her and that this was one she had to do on her own.
I left and was barely in the door when they called to say she had passed.
My mother was with her mother when she passed and she had told me it was a very bad experience for her. I felt she was hanging on to spare me the same.
So let’s remember my mom with a happy Christmas memory, shall we?
She would have liked that.
One of our family traditions during the holidays was my mom reading to my sister and me from a large book collection of Christmas stories.
I have tried to find a copy of it for decades.
My sister and I used to pass it back and forth every other year.
When Rachel was old enough for the stories, my sister gifted it to me to keep to read to our children.
However, the vintage pictures, antiquated tales and yellowed pages did not appeal to their generation, so I returned it to my sister as I knew it meant so much to her.
We loved every single story and poem and could almost recite them from memory as the years passed, but still we would sit on either side of my mom each night as she read the familiar tales with the same dramatic presentation that brought them to life.
There was “Granny Glittens and her Amazing Mittens”, in which a grandma knitted mittens for the village children every year. But this one year the yarn store only sent white yarn. She died the yarn with candies to make all the pretty colors. The clincher was that the children loved the mittens were not only warm, they were delicious! So the children would nibble on them, giving Granny a full time knitting job all winter!
“The Penny Walk” told the story of two friends out for a Christmas walk, looking for the perfect gift for one of the girl’s little brother. She found a decorated cookie for him that fit her budget and had a penny left in change. They used the penny to determine their route home, flipping it at each corner to make a turn. On one street, the wind took a wreath off a door and in the chase to retrieve it, the cookie got broken. On returning the wreath, they found an elderly lady who was waiting for a taxi to take her to the train. She was leaving to winter in the South and was so sad as she had not found anyone to watch her parrot while she was gone. Go ahead and figure how this one worked out.
We would beg for one more story, but my mom knew exactly how many to read each night so that we ended up with the last reading on Christmas Eve. It was, of course, the true Christmas Story.
I no longer have the book, or my mom. To be honest, my sister kind of left my life five years ago.
But I have the memories.
They are tangible and fill me with the warmth of being loved and cared for as a child.
I am grateful, even if a little sad. This too, is part of Christmas as the years pass. A blend of memories, some good and some hard, but all woven together so that joy and sorrow can walk side by side.
If you ever run across a large black shiny book of Christmas stories that is probably published in the 50’s…check the contents. If you see Granny Glittens and The Penny Walk amongst the pages…nab it.
It’s a classic <3