Blue Lights and Silent Night (The loss of a loved one at Christmas can change the way you look at Christmas from then on. Its up to you. I chose to consider myself blessed by my very own Christmas angel after my father passed away during the holidays. I posted this last year. Maybe this can help someone this year as well. Merry Christmas). In the early morning of December 22nd some twenty years ago my father passed away as snowflakes fell and Christmas lights swayed in the wind. He was 76. I could have chosen to define every holiday season after that by his death. But I didn’t. Instead I define the holiday season by his life. That’s what my father, a funeral director by trade, would have wanted me to do. When I was in my teens we moved above the funeral home where quite often the thin line between life and death was drawn at unexpected moments. Two such moments remain vivid in my mind-the Easter morning when our plans to go to a family dinner were abruptly changed by a call telling my father that a little girl had choked on a jelly bean and died and the rainy March evening as I was going up the back stairs with a load of laundry only to be stopped by the cries of a grieving family gathered to meet their son returning home from serving in the military in a flag-draped coffin. In both word and deed my father was a teacher. Lessons in life were his expertise. Compassion was his guide as he led families through their sorrow. During calling hours he’d stand by the oak door of the funeral home and greet those stopping to pay their respects. Growing up I’d question the ritual of funerals and every time my father’s short answer was the same-“Funerals are for the living.” I never thought much about what his answer meant until that very cold and sad December evening three days before Christmas when it was his wake I was attending. The funeral home had been sold a few years earlier yet as I started up the familiar steps of the covered porch with its wide staircase I felt him right beside me. When I came to that oak door the realization that he was gone consumed me like a winter blizzard. He wasn’t standing where I’d seen him stand so many times. He was not the greeter. Instead, he was the person to whom those who came in sorrow were coming to pay their respects. Images of him at that very spot in his crisp black suit and a perfectly tied tie with his warm, comforting tone overwhelmed me. Tears flowed as quickly as the snowflakes fell. Stepping back into that historic home with its six fireplaces where we’d lived and laughed and welcomed friends and family and newborns and celebrated holidays and birthdays, my father’s five word statement rang true. Funerals are for the living. I understood. I got it. We, his grief stricken family, were swallowed up in sorrow. And over the next day and a half those who came to pay their respects to share memories and a laugh or two would embrace us like a favorite blanket. Loss of a loved one needs the comforting of the living. That’s what the funeral director kept telling me. My father loved Christmas. He and my mother made sure the tree was the freshest and the biggest they could find. One year they put two trees together to satisfy their need of a full and perfect tree. It was my father’s self-proclaimed duty to string the lights which were always blue. Meticulously and for as long as it took, he’d stand on a ladder and reach way back in between the branches to hide any hint of the actual wire. Whether it was taking squash down to the garage and smashing them open on the cement floor or carrying the rather large box with a Butterball turkey inside and up the stairs or making extra trips to the store whenever my mother asked, my father did whatever he could to help prepare our family for the celebration of Christmas atop the funeral home. Dressed in his red vest, he’d enjoy every moment. If he’d had it his way, Bing Crosby would have sung Silent Night all day long. Of course the day would take a different turn if he was needed downstairs. My father’s funeral was the morning of Christmas Eve. It was a beautiful winter’s day with anticipation in the air. While others hustled from store to store we prepared to say good bye to a man who’d led so many to the very place we went in search of solace. Magnificent trees dressed in twinkling white lights surrounded the altar. Simple wreaths hung from each pillar of the old French church smelling of pine and a history of families and tradition. It was when the organist broke into Silent Night that tears flowed uncontrollably. Voices somehow kept singing in celebration of a life well lived. The loss of my father at Christmas hasn’t changed the way I look at Christmas. It hasn’t changed the way we celebrate Christmas. It’s only reinforced all the more that Christmas is about family. Family is about the all encompassing circle of life which he was so well aware of with its beginnings and ends and memories that will never be forgotten; memories and stories that will be shared through generations to come-just like blue lights on Christmas trees and Bing Crosby
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 14:17:56 +0000
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