A
Tale of Two Christmases
Published in Marietta Daily Journal Dec. 25, 2016
The
following is a re-print of a column published in 2012. For myself, it still serves as a reminder of
what Christmas means.
On Christmas morning of 1965 my
father, my younger brother, and I followed my mother’s casket out of a small
church in rural Mississippi. The crisp,
Christmas Day air was a welcome relief to our tear-streaked, hot cheeks.
I was 21, my brother Carlton,
18. Our mother was 65. We both thought she was so old. Actually, age 65 really was older then than
it is now, especially for a country woman aged by Southern summer suns and 45
years or so of childbearing and childrearing.
It wasn’t children and hard work that did her in, however. It was kidney stones.
For years they had plagued her. Her
pill bottle collection of the stones would have scared a medical student. Several times a year Dr. Baker Austin would
come from town with his gawky medical bag and administer a shot to ease the
pain from the stones.
Her death had not been sudden. Shortly after Thanksgiving, the urologist at
St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson had told us her kidneys were embedded with
stones and that the resulting uremia was quite advanced. The closer we got to Christmas, the more
hopeless her situation became. It was
one of those long good-byes.
I arrived home from college to be
with her at the hospital the week before Christmas. All of my older brothers and sisters had
families of their own, but those living nearby had been able to take care of
her.
Death is one thing; dying is
another. The week of her dying, my mind
raced back repeatedly to my childhood.
As a small child, I was a big worrier.
Because I knew my mother was so much older than the mothers of my
classmates (they were the age of my older sisters), I was afraid my mother
would die before I grew up. The doctor’s
visits to our house re-enforced my fear.
Although this anxiety subsided by the time I was a teen, occasional
thoughts of losing my mother drove me to the vast Bienville National Forest
behind our house to cry alone.
Please understand, but at some level,
I think our mother willed her death.
Despite her characteristic strength and joy of life, there was no modern
bravado of “I’m gonna conquer this.” In
fact, at the height of one of her worst illnesses, when my younger brother and
I were the only children still at home, she looked up at us from her bed and
with a forced smile spoke quietly, “I’ve always said if God will let me live
until my baby boys get grown, I will be happy.”
Her “baby boys” were now grown. With
our eyes glued to her casket, I began complaining to God, raising those
self-pitying “why” questions we’ve all felt, heard, or expressed. Within moments, however, the God to whom I
complained used two things to dispel my grief.
The first thing was the cool
December air. As it patted my cheeks, it
also seemed to whisper, “Life goes on and you can too.”
The second thing was the Christmas
Day meal our family shared. The laughter
and storytelling, so common to all our gatherings, was not abated by the loss
of our mother. Our Christmas joy amidst
the sorrow was no indication of anybody’s super-spirituality; rather, it was a
testimony to the power of what our parents had taught us. In this case, it was “Death, where is thy
sting? Grave, where is thy victory?”
On another Christmas morning, this
time in Georgia in 1981, I drove from my home in Kennesaw to Northside Hospital,
not because of a death but because of a birth.
Our new, second son and last child, Reagan, had been born on Christmas
Eve.
Reagan came home in a Northside
Hospital Christmas stocking to join his siblings Christy, Wendy, and Jeff, his
countenance as fresh and happy as was his grandmother’s right up to the week of
her dying in 1965. Reagan made this
Christmas a Thanksgiving as well.
Since even Herod the Great couldn’t
stop Christmas, I pray that no reader of these musings will ever allow life’s
setbacks or man’s evil to stop it either.
The Christmas message is still the same: God came down. Irrefutably, wherever this message has gone,
schools, hospitals, and orphanages have followed. In other words, enlightenment, healing, and
compassion.
As it turned out, my own two
favorite Christmases weren’t too different; they both ended in peace. Ever wondered, perhaps along with Elvis
Presley, “Why can’t every day be like Christmas?” We know that every day should be. The Christmas message says every day can be.
Merry Christmas!
Roger
Hines
12/19/12
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