Only this year, things were different. Our father had passed away November 26, and this was our first Christmas without him. Mother was doing her best to be the gracious hostess, but I could tell this was especially hard for her. I felt a catch in my throat, and again I wondered if I should give her my planned Christmas gift, or if it had become inappropriate in my father’s absence.
A few months earlier I was putting the finishing touches on portraits I had painted of each of my parents. I’d planned to give them as Christmas gifts. This would be a surprise for everyone, as I had not studied art or tried serious painting. Yet there had been an undeniable urge that pushed me relentlessly to do this. The portraits did look like them, but I was still unsure of my painting skill.
While painting one day, I was surprised by a doorbell ring. Quickly putting all my painting materials out of sight, I opened the door. To my astonishment, my father ambled in alone, never before having visited me without my mother. Grinning, he said, “I’ve missed our early morning talks. You know, the ones we had before you decided to leave me for another man!” I hadn’t been married long. Also, I was the only girl and the baby of the family.
Immediately I wanted to show him the paintings, but I was reluctant to ruin his Christmas surprise. Yet something urged me to share this moment with him. After swearing him to secrecy, I insisted he keep his eyes closed until I had the portraits set on easels. “Okay, Daddy. Now you can look!”
He appeared dazed but said nothing. Getting up, he walked closer to inspect them. Then he withdrew to eye them at a distance. I tried to control my stomach flip-flops. Finally, with a tear escaping down one cheek, he mumbled, “I don’t believe it. The eyes are so real that they follow you everywhere—and look how beautiful your mother is. Will you let me have them framed?”
Thrilled with his response, I happily volunteered to drop them off the next day at the frame shop. Several weeks passed. Then one night in November the phone rang, and a cold chill numbed my body. I picked up the receiver to hear my husband, a doctor, say, “I’m in the emergency room. Your father has had a stroke. It’s bad, but he is still alive.”
Daddy lingered in a coma for several days. I went to see him in the hospital the day before he died. I slipped my hand in his and asked, “Do you know who I am, Daddy?”
He surprised everyone when he whispered, “You’re my darling daughter.” He died the next day, and it seemed all joy was drained from the lives of my mother and me.
I finally remembered to call about the portrait framing and thanked God my father had gotten a chance to see the pictures before he died. I was surprised when the shopkeeper told me my father had visited the shop, paid for the framing and had them gift wrapped. In our grief, I had no longer planned to give the portraits to my mother.
Even though we had lost the patriarch of our family, everyone assembled on Christmas Day—making an effort to be cheerful. As I looked into my mother’s sad eyes and unsmiling face, I decided to give her Daddy’s and my gift.
As she stripped the paper from the box, I saw her heart wasn’t in it. There was a small card inside attached to the pictures.
After looking at the portraits and reading the card, her entire demeanor changed. She bounced out of her chair, handed the card to me and commissioned my brothers to hang the paintings facing each other over the fireplace. She stepped back and looked for a long while. With sparkling, tear-filled eyes and a wide smile, she quickly turned and said, “I knew Daddy would be with us on Christmas Day!”
I glanced at the gift card scrawled in my father’s handwriting. “Mother—Our daughter reminded me why I am so blessed. I’ll be looking at you always—Daddy.”
Sarah A. Rivers
A Gift of Faith
Growing up in suburban Baltimore, my brother, sister and I were typical kids. What set us apart from the other children in the neighborhood was our Irish Catholic upbringing. We were the “Catholic-school” kids. All of our friends went to the public school. They got to ride the school bus. They got new clothes every fall. They always talked about people we only knew from their yearbooks. And they definitely weren’t forced to go to Mass every Saturday night!
Some of my friends went to church with their families. I even went with them a few times, but I often found myself defending my Catholic beliefs. Many times I’d come home and ask my mother questions like why we prayed to the Blessed Mother.
My younger brother, Chris, questioned our religion for different reasons. A sensitive kid, he was always disturbed by news reports of violence and famine. As a result, the question he would often ask my mother is, “How do you know there is a God?”
My mother enjoyed these conversations. She would sit for hours in her rocking chair, happy to share her beliefs, and hoping to provide comfort and strength to her children as they grew into independent young adults. Her faith was always evident. She lived her life the way she thought God wanted her to. That is one reason why she was okay with the thought of dying. She often said, “When it’s my time, it’s my time. It’s not up to me.” She accepted God’s will for what it was.
Her faith sustained her through every challenge in life. It wasn’t until the Persian Gulf War that I realized how powerful that faith could be. Fresh out of college and a young army officer, I had no idea what a war would be like. When I got deployed to Saudi Arabia, my mother sent me a card that read, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” I kept that card next to my pillow so it would be the last thing I’d see at night and the first thing I’d see in the morning.
After I had my own children, I started to realize how special the relationship between a mother and her children is. I had always loved my mother, but once I became one, I began to really appreciate her. When I was younger, I had sworn I’d do something more than “just” be a mom, which seemed so trivial, so unimportant. As events unfolded, however, I found myself making sacrifices for my family. I learned how powerful a mother truly is.
My mother and I talked about that when my three girls were little. We talked about everything. She really was my best friend. We’d end our conversations with her saying, “Mother loves you.” I’d answer it with, “Daughter loves you.” She knew how I felt because she had lost her own mother shortly after my older sister, Kathy, was born. It made my mom sad that she never told her mother how much she appreciated her. Ironically, I never fully understood the depth of the pain she felt after her mother died until she herself passed away in May 1997.
I was living in Indiana at the time, thirty-one years old and pregnant with my fourth child. I was looking forward to having the baby because I knew my mother would come and cook for me. I even told that to my husband the Thursday night before Memorial Day weekend, after a long day of morning sickness and taking care of my three small girls. As soon as I said it, the phone rang.
My brother-in-law was calling to tell me my mother was in the intensive care unit. Her heart had stopped as she was working out that afternoon at the health club. At fifty-seven, she was in pretty good shape. She and my father enjoyed an active social life and, though she had been on heart medication for years, she never let it slow her down.
Fortunately, a doctor, an off-duty firefighter and a nurse happened to be working out at the club and were able to revive her with CPR. She had no recollection of her ordeal and seemed fine to everyone who spent the weekend visiting her in the hospital. On Monday, they moved her to a private room with a phone, giving me an opportunity to talk with her. I teased her because she didn’t remember seeing any white lights at the end of the tunnel. She assured me that if she had to go, that was the way she wanted to do it because she didn’t feel anything, and it happened quickly.
“At least hold off till this baby is born,” I remember saying to her, half-joking, half-serious.
Her response: “When it’s my time, it’s my time. I’m ready if the Lord wants me.”
“
That’s great for you,” I said, “but none of us are ready for you to go yet.”
What she said next were the last words I remember her saying to me. They were the beautiful culmination of thirty-one years of my Irish Catholic upbringing all summed up in a humorous, heartfelt flubbing of the lines: “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and may God hold you in the palm of his hands, until we meet again.” We said good-bye, hung up, and I knew I’d never talk to her again. Daughter loves you, I thought.
She was scheduled for an operation on Tuesday morning. If all went well, she’d be released on Wednesday. Unfortunately, my father got a call around six in the morning on Tuesday. Her heart had stopped again. He and Chris rushed to the hospital and were led to a waiting room. They waited until a nurse named Bobbie came out and said to my brother, “Are you Chris?”
Days later I called Bobbie to hear her tell the story. My mother’s heart had stopped, and the hospital staff had rushed in to revive her. She had been gone for about forty-five minutes. “We didn’t want to stop. She was too young,” Bobbie told me. Certainly, all hope was lost; still, they had persisted. Suddenly, my mother’s eyes opened! She reached up and grabbed Bobbie’s arm, looked into her eyes and said with great urgency, “There is a God! I saw his face! Tell Chris, there is a God!” And then, my mother was gone.
Our mother, who constantly reaffirmed our faith in life, did so even more in death. When I heard the story, I remembered the many times I’d seen my mother praying the Rosary, sometimes even using her fingers to count the Hail Mary’s. So many times she had asked for the Blessed Mother’s intercession, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Her prayers were answered. Mary’s gift to our mother was our mother’s gift to us—the gift of faith. There is a God.
Kelly E. Kyburz
I’ll Make You a Rainbow
Looking back, I’ve often thought the doctors should have written a death certificate for me as well as my son, for when he died, a part of me died, too.
Andy was almost twelve. For over three years he had been battling cancer. He’d gone through radiation and chemotherapy; he’d gone into remission and come out again, not once but several times. I was amazed at his resiliency; he just kept getting up each time the cancer knocked him flat. Perhaps it was his pluckiness and grit that shaped my own attitude about Andy’s future, or maybe I was simply afraid to face the possibility of his death. Whatever the cause, I always thought Andy would make it. He would be the kid who beat the odds.
For three summers, Andy had gone to a camp for kids with cancer. He loved it and seemed to relish the week he could forget about hospitals and sickness and just be a kid again. The day after he returned from his third camp adventure, we went to the clinic for a routine checkup. The news was bad. The doctor scheduled a bone-marrow transplant two days later in a hospital three hundred miles from our home. The next day we threw our things in a suitcase and left.
One of the things I tossed into my suitcase was the present Andy had brought me from camp—a plastic sun catcher shaped like a rainbow with a suction cup to attach it to a window. Like most mothers, I considered any present from my child a treasure and wanted it with me.
We arrived at the hospital and began the grueling ordeal the doctors said was my son’s only chance. We spent seven weeks there. They turned out to be the last seven weeks of Andy’s life.
We never talked about dying—except once. Andy was worn out and must have known he was losing ground. He tried to clue me in. Nauseous and weak after one of the many difficult procedures he regularly endured, he turned to me and asked, “Does it hurt to die?”
I was shocked, but answered truthfully, “I don’t know. But I don’t want to talk about death, because you are not going to die, Andy.”
He took my hand and said, “Not yet, but I’m getting very tired.”
I knew what he was telling me, but I tried hard to ignore it and keep the awful thought from entering my mind.
I spent a lot of my days watching Andy sleep. Sometimes I went to the gift shop to buy cards and notepaper. I had very little money, barely enough to survive. The nurses knew our situation and turned a blind eye when I slept in Andy’s room and ate the extra food we ordered off of Andy’s tray. But I always managed to scrape a bit together for the paper and cards because Andy loved getting mail so much.
The bone-marrow transplant was a terrible ordeal. Andy couldn’t have any visitors because his immune system was so compromised. I could tell that he felt more isolated than ever. Determined to do something to make it easier for him, I began approaching total strangers in the waiting rooms and asking them, “Would you write my son a card?” I’d explain his situation and offer them a card or some paper to write on. With surprised expressions on their faces, they did it. No one refused me. They took one look at me and saw a mother in pain.
It amazed me that these kind people, who were dealing with their own worries, made the time to write Andy. Some would just sign a card with a little get-well message. Others wrote real letters: “Hi, I’m from Idaho visiting my grandmother here in the hospital . . .” and they’d fill a page or two with their story, sometimes inviting Andy to visit their homes when he was better. Once a woman flagged me down and said, “You asked me to write your son a couple of weeks ago. Can I write him again?” I mailed all these letters to Andy and watched happily as he read them. Andy had a steady stream of mail right up until the day he died.
One day, I went to the gift store to buy more cards and saw a rainbow prism for sale. Remembering the rainbow sun catcher Andy had given me, I felt I had to buy it for him. It was a lot of money to spend, but I handed over the cash and hurried back to Andy’s room to show him.
He was lying in his bed, too weak to even raise his head. The blinds were almost shut, but a crack of sunlight slanted across the bed. I put the prism in his hand and said, “Andy, make me a rainbow.” But Andy couldn’t. He tried to hold his arm up, but it was too much for him.
He turned his face to me and said, “Mom, as soon as I’m better, I’ll make you a rainbow you’ll never forget.”
That was one of the last things Andy said to me. Just a few hours later, he went to sleep and during the night, slipped into a coma. I stayed with him in the intensive care unit, massaging him, talking to him and reading him his mail, but he never stirred. The only sound was the constant drone and beepings of the life-support machines surrounding his bed. I was looking death straight in the face, but still I thought there’d be a last-minute save, a miracle that would bring my son back to me.
After five days, the doctors told me his brain had stopped functioning, and it was time to disconnect him from the machines keeping his body alive.
I asked if I could hold him. Just after dawn, they brought a rocking chair into the room, and after I settled myself in the chair, they turned off the machines and lifted him from the bed to place him in my arms. As they raised him from the bed, his leg made an involuntary movement, and he knocked a clear plastic pitcher from his bedside table onto the bed.
“Open the blinds,” I cried. “I want this room to be full of sunlight!” The nurse hurried to the window to pull the cord.
As she did so, I noticed a sun catcher in the shape of the rainbow attached to the window, left no doubt by a previous occupant of this room. I caught my breath in wonder. Then, as the light filled the room, it hit the pitcher lying on its side on the bed, and everyone stopped what they were doing in silent awe.
The room was filled with flashes of color, dozens and dozens of rainbows on the walls, the floors, the ceiling, on the blanket wrapped around Andy as he lay in my arms— the room was alive with rainbows.
No one could speak. I looked down at my son, and he had stopped breathing. Andy was gone, but even in the shock of that first wave of grief, I felt comforted. Andy had made the rainbow that he promised me—the one I would never forget.
Linda Bremner
Seven W
hite, Four Red, Two Blue
One joy shatters a hundred griefs.
Chinese Proverb
I believe every object in our lives holds a memory. The most prized object in my life, and the one that holds the most memories, is a rusty tin box. I need only look at the beat-up old tin box, resting obscurely on my bookshelf next to a picture of my five-year-old daughter, to unleash a flood of memories and emotions. Some happy—some sad—all mine.
The first true love of my life, and the one that still causes the most pain, was a Japanese girl named Hitomi. In Japanese her name meant Pure Beauty, but you didn’t need to speak the language to understand that. You just had to look at her. I was twenty-six and she was twenty-one when we first met at a nightclub in Okinawa, Japan. I swear she came straight out of a fairy tale. She had long, straight, silky black hair that flowed to her perfectly shaped waist and highlighted her hundred-and-five-pound frame. Her skin was soft and tanned and seemed to glow in the sunlight; but what I remember most were her eyes. Her eyes seemed to pass right through me and touch the very depth of my soul. I was in love.
We started dating shortly after that first meeting. Hitomi was a very sentimental person. Every day held special importance to her. I would soon understand why.
One day, after we had been going out for about a month, she showed up at my apartment and handed me something. “Present,” she said. I opened the carefully wrapped handkerchiefs she had used as gift wrap. What I saw surprised me—a beat-up, old, rusted, lime green, tin cigar box. The lid had the remains of a picture on the outside. Through the rust and chipped paint I could only make out what appeared to be a finger and an ear. The rest of the box looked just as bad—like it had been dragged behind a car after a wedding sixty years ago.