Christmas Decorating Day at Clubhouse Hi Tiki, It’s Sunday night and the Thanksgiving holiday is coming to a close. I spent this afternoon at the clubhouse helping with the Christmas decorations. You and I did this every year that we lived here except last year because you were in the hospital. You always baked cookies to bring for everyone, so I baked some this morning and brought them. My job today was to repair all the light strings. With the exception of one or two of them, they all had something wrong with them. For the outside lights I had to use 12 strings to be able to assemble 6 that worked. The outside lighting is going to be a little skimpy this year. After I finished fixing the lights, I worked on hanging the wreaths and other decorations that had to go up high. We had plenty of coffee, hot chocolate, cake, and cookies. When we were all done we divided up what was left and I came home with more goodies than I brought. All in all it was an enjoyable afternoon. Later on after I came home, I lost it for a while. I started thinking about the times we had done this in the past and a huge tsunami wave of grief washed over me and pulled me under. I had to let my emotions go until some of the pain was washed away. After I let go for a while, I stopped and went for a power walk in the dark to try and get some endorphins flowing. As I walked I thought about the last time you and I helped with the decorations at the clubhouse. I focused on this memory until I walked off the grief. It was the first Sunday of December in 2012. We had survived Hurricane Sandy. You had completed 9 cycles of chemotherapy and several radiation treatments. We had just gotten the results of your latest PET scan and the news was good. Your cancer had shrunk considerably, and was showing low activity. Our oncologist took you off chemo and put you on maintenance therapy. We had been given a reprieve and you were going to be able to enjoy the holidays with cancer in retreat. You were so happy that you must have baked over 20 cakes to bring to the clubhouse that day. You were your normal energetic, effervescent self. You even wore your jeweled flip-flops for the occasion. You fluttered around the clubhouse decorating everything in sight. I helped you with the tree. Tree decoration was one of your well honed specialties. When you finished decorating a Christmas tree, it was a sculpture. My function was to help you hang the ornaments on the high branches because you couldnt reach them. I would hang; you would stand back and look, if you didnt like the way it looked I would move it until you were satisfied. By the time you were through, I thought I was going to need rotator cuff surgery. Whenever I groaned, you would happily stuff a piece of cake or a cookie in my mouth. I didnt care. We were enjoying every second of the reprieve we had been granted. This would turn out to be our last holiday season together. We made it a beautiful one because we focused on being with each other and blocked out all the other worries we were dealing with. Without even having to say it, we both knew what was looming over us, and we both tried to let the other know how much we loved each other. Our main goal in life became to make the best of every microsecond we had and to make each other as happy as we could. The best Christmas gift I received that year was another Christmas with you. Thinking about you and our last team effort to decorate the clubhouse gradually enabled me to swim out of the undertow of grief and brought a smile to my face. I’m still Lucky Jim because I married Lucille and you still light up my life whenever I’m lost in the dark. I love you Honey. Now I’m going to have some of the cookies and cake I brought back from the clubhouse. One thing I just noticed, most of the cookies I brought back seem to be the ones I made. Do you think that’s a message? Tonight you can decorate the tree in my heart. Good night Tiki.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 03:25:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015