Christmas Passed

Christmas Passed



She arranges herself at her private table in the acclaimed brasserie that she owns, contemplating her daily indulgence, a gin martini in advance of lunch. Some tables down, intimate laughter and breathy whispers fill the air and her mind drifts to her husband, dead these past five months. She muses while sipping the drink Alfonso always mixes moments after she walks in and delivers once she makes eye contact. Some days the martini disappears before Alfonso returns to the bar. Today, more slowly. Alfonso lets her linger. The gin buzz begins to blossom, blunting her overwhelming sadness.

She paws at memories of youthful adventures in the Italian Alps, the joys of one very precocious great-granddaughter, the professional accolades testifying to her successful career. They do nothing to dilute the enormity of this morning’s conversation that had delivered news simultaneously unsurprising—she is 81, after all—and devastating.

He tempted her to focus on the immunotherapy; perhaps a complete cure, her oncologist touted.

“Game-changing,” he had called it.

How thoughtless—rude even—to attach the notion of a game to the topic at hand. He had cautioned it was a long shot—another gaming reference—so best to get her affairs in order.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she screamed inside her head.

She is among the richest people in these United States. Her affairs have been in order for half a century.

The gin seizes her. She thinks of Prudence, Maxwell, and Winston, her cats and English bulldog, and death’s specter bores in on her. She plunges toward depression remembering last Christmas.

An eagle negotiates the fog above stock still Lake Thunderhead, alighting in the nude branches of a red oak, the raptor’s white crown highlighted against the dormant background of late, snowless December. Geese straddle the border of the lake’s metamorphosis, lazing through water juxtaposed to striated splotches of ice that signal the coming hard freeze. The paterfamilias mumbles like a hoarse parrot, rasping his glee over his Christmas gifts, his dementia revealed in the endless repetition. His spouse of six decades shouts at him both to overcome his decimated hearing and to turn his decaying mind toward some new subject.

She had wondered whether it would be malignant prostate cells metastasizing through the blood-brain barrier, or the last in a series of damaging falls, this one fatal. In the end it had merely been the vicissitudes of 93 years of life screaming “NO MORE!” Does the cause of death matter? Perhaps only to pathologists and actuaries, but to the family? No.

Memorial Day—fitting—and the last breath is exhaled. Funeral, eulogy, burial, obituary, tears all follow. The widow’s grief is outward and evident but she secretly lets relief adorn her soul. No more shouting, caregiving, trips to the ER. She is released!

She sips again and the olive bumps her upper lip, bringing her back from their bucolic annual holiday vacation to Manhattan on Black Friday, 2025. She pushes her daydreaming aside and lets the comfort of the fox and hound atmosphere, the opulent bar, the meal to come—she always orders the sea bass—move her mind toward more pragmatic matters. A tentative smile tickles the edges of her mouth. She considers the scallops as she waves over Alfonso.

She would retreat to the compound on Grand Cayman Island, warm weather to bathe her weary bones. She could just as easily decorate a tree in the sunny Caribbean as in that shabby lake home he loved so much and that she had been happy to unload.

She had donated his clothes, golf clubs, and woodworking tools but left his study untouched. Selling the championship banners, boxing up the superhero toys, removing the pictures he had taken, edited, and framed would be a violation of his sanctuary and she could find no stomach for what amounted to a second burial. Or was it simply run-of-the-mill procrastination? Most days she was sure it was the latter but remained inhibited by the former.

High on a shelf was the box of Christmas ornaments he never hung on a tree but had collected, as she had termed it, “just for pretties.” She rifled through the plastic and metal tokens of joy and fished out two favorites: the ’64 Cadillac with the exaggerated fins—they had owned that very model—and the Santa in a bucket hat and flip flops pushing a lawnmower with Retired spelled out in jaunty script across his polo. She’d hold him close to her heart on Christmas day but also engage in a little selfish celebration; her gin martini, never as good as one of Alfonso’s, a few gifts for herself—she had been fancying that Hobo bag—and the sea’s beauty.

Christmas morning found her drinking black coffee on the shore. She fidgeted with the tiny Cadillac and the summery Santa, bouncing back and forth between the beach condo and the smooth sand that hosted wavelets lapping at her feet. She was filled with anticipation at the thought of hosting post-Christmas festivities and approached—with feigned gaiety and for the first time—Boxing Day, a “celebration” about which she knew nothing but remained amused by the name. Once her daughter called after lunch to cancel the visit, she couldn’t get the old Harry Chapin line out of her head.

“Y’see the new job’s a hassle and the kid’s with the flu, but it’s sure nice talking to you Mom; it’s been sure nice talkin’ to you.”

She shot the TV with the remote and perused the movie titles. She unhooked two of her favorites from the tree; the Pillsbury dough boy with his rolling pin and goofy smile and the Barbie in elfin garb and arranged them next to the Cadillac and Mowing Santa. She stared at the 30 year old single malt on the bar cart and considered the hoarded Oxy in the medicine cabinet.

Two hours later, she had caved to her emotions, her face wet with tears, as Jimmy Stewart and a cast of 1940s actors belted out Auld Lang Syne at the conclusion of Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” And she thought of another ‘70s rocker; Bob Seger counseled her to “see some old friends, good for the soul.”

END