December is still the month for magic
- col-leslie-pearce-keating
- December 18, 2023
- 443
I like to think December is a month for magical occurrences, love and good cheer, goodwill toward all people, donations dropped in red buckets, Christmas carols, Hanukkah lights, miracles even. I’ve seen a few in my life, and I experienced a new one just a few weeks ago on Dec. 1.
To be honest, it was my dad’s birthday. That always holds a bit of magic because the big, barrel-chested Marine/police superintendent was born a tiny preemie 3 months early, stored in a bread warmer, the ninth child born to a coal miner and his wife back in 1925 before incubators were even invented. Although Dad’s been gone for 17 years, I still felt his presence as I drove back home.
I went to Youngstown early that morning to sing the funeral of my beloved friend’s husband. Roy was a good, good man, and he suffered terribly with Alzheimer’s. His wife Diane, I might venture, suffered more than him. I know this because she loves with every inch of her being.
Diane looked exhausted that morning as she accompanied the casket to the church while I prepared my mic and music. When she eulogized Roy, my heart broke a little with each word.
“Why does life have to be so hard for such good people?” I whispered to the Lord in Immaculate Heart Church in Austintown.
Afterward, a hundred of Diane and Roy’s nearest and dearest processed to the bereavement meal. Diane tried to be gallant, but I knew her love for Roy was breaking her in two that cold morning. It was breaking me in two as well because Diane was my role model in high school, my drama teacher, the woman I wanted to emulate at Cardinal Mooney. Her husband was an all-star athletic coach.
From the meal I drove across town to see my mom, to decorate her room at Shepherd of the Valley Care Center, to take down the sunflowers and pumpkins from her 6-foot pencil tree and display winter’s fare. But my heart just wasn’t in it. I was still fixated on my dear friend’s suffering. How would Diane make it through the holidays with such sadness in her heart?
So when I entered Mom’s room and found her sitting up in bed, I was quietly stupefied. As I bent to kiss her, she said, “Now there’s my sweet, little girl!” And I began to weep. All of that morning’s sadness finally spilled over. In addition, we’ve been told Mom has end-stage dementia, that she at 100.5 could pass at any time. Over the past five years, she’s battled strokes, pneumonia, congestive heart failure, blood clots, sepsis, UTIs, and that’s not mentioning the vascular dementia, which leaves her mostly silent and nearly starved at about 100 pounds.
Actress that Diane taught me to be, I sat on the side of Mom’s bed as if this were a normal day. Mom called me by name as she held the stuffed Santa I brought her. She laughed and cried, even figured out a few off-color jokes I let fly.
Of course, Mom wasn’t completely cognizant of the here and now. She spoke to her mother, who she said was across the room, but then Roy spoke to his mother before he passed too, so who am I to say who is there and who isn’t? Just in case, I said hello to my grandmother, whom I haven’t seen since 1989 when she drew her last breath. Mom and I spoke of Christmases long ago, our favorite holiday recipes like kolache, and then I sang a few Slovak Christmas carols. As I bedecked her room with holiday red and green, she giggled and held Santa tight.
I guess it may sound silly if you don’t believe in magical things, but it was a day of past, present and future. Yes, I believe my grandmother was there to comfort my mother, just as Roy’s mom was there to welcome him. I believe those songs Mom taught me were a gift from the past that I can now give to her in the present. And that’s the miracle of the holidays. My mom came back to help me remember that, to give me a miracle to remember for the years to come.
Her food tray arrived, which, to be honest, looked inedible with the dinner mashed and gravied. Instead, I unwrapped the maple cream stick with iced tea she had once awaited on my visits. She ate tiny bird-like morsels from my fingers and smiled at me as only a mother can.
And something holy was there, something otherworldly conjured up by Mom or Dad or Roy or maybe Grandma. And I felt so blessed, so truly blessed.