A Tale of Two Christmases

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 12/18/21

            On Christmas morning of 1965 my father, my younger brother and I followed my mother’s casket out of a small, rural church in Mississippi. The crisp Christmas Day air was a welcome relief to our tear-streaked hot cheeks. The sunshine as well was a Godsend.

            I was 21, my brother Carlton, 18. Our mother was 65. We thought she was so old. Actually, age 65 truly was older then than it is now, especially for a country woman aged by Southern summer suns and over 45 years of childbearing and childrearing. It wasn’t children and hard work that did her in, however. It was kidney stones.

            For years kidney stones had plagued her. Several times a year Dr. Baker Austin would come from town with his gawky medical bag to administer a shot to ease the pain from the stones.

            Our mother’s death had not been sudden. Shortly after Thanksgiving the urologist at St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson had told us that her kidneys were embedded with stones and that the resulting uremia was quite advanced. The closer we got to Christmas, the more hopeless her condition 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 15 brothers and sisters had families of their own, but those living nearby had taken care of her.  

            Death is one thing; dying is another. During the week of her observable dying, my mind raced back repeatedly to my childhood. As a small child I was a big worrier. Knowing my mother was so much older than the mothers of my elementary school classmates (their mothers 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 reinforced my fear, often driving me to the vast Bienville National Forest behind our house to cry privately.

            Please understand, but at some level I think our mother willed her death. Despite her characteristic strength and joy of life, she expressed no such bravado as “I’m gonna conquer this.” In fact, at the height of one of her worst attacks when Carlton and I were the only children still at home, she looked at us with a forced smile and said quietly,” If God will let me live until my baby boys get grown, I’ll be ready to go.”

            Her “baby boys” were now grown. With my eyes glued to her casket, I began to grieve anew, complaining to God with those oft-raised “why” questions we’ve all felt, heard, or expressed. Within a couple of hours, however, two things not only alleviated but obliterated my grief.

            The first thing was the cool Christmas Day air. As it patted my cheek it seemed to say, “Your mother was strong and you can be too.”  The second thing was the Christmas Day noon meal (“dinner”) our family shared. Our laughter and storytelling, so characteristic of all our gatherings, were not lessened by the loss of our mother. Our joy amidst sorrow was no indication of anyone’s super-spirituality. Rather, it was a testimony to the power of what our parents and pastors had pointed to in the Bible: “Oh Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?”

            On another early 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. Driving south on I-75 and atop I-285, I saw only four vehicles. Ah, Christmas does slow us down, I mused.

            A week later Reagan came home in a Northside Hospital Christmas stocking to join his siblings, Christy, Wendy, and Jeff, his countenance as fresh and happy as his grandmother’s was right up to the week of her dying. Reagan made this Christmas a Thanksgiving as well.

            Since even Herod the Great couldn’t suppress Christmas, I pray that no reader of these musings will ever allow life’s setbacks or man’s evil to suppress it either. The Christmas message is still the same: God put on an earth suit. Wherever this message has gone schools, hospitals, and orphanages have followed as have peace and joy to the world.

            As it turned out, my own two favorite Christmases weren’t so different after all. They both ended in peace and joy. Ever wondered, along with Elvis Pressley, “Why can’t every day be like Christmas?” We know that every day should be. The Christmas message says they can be.

            Merry Christmas! And peace to you amid any sorrow.

 

Roger Hines

December 15, 2021