The First Noel

This story tells of someone passing away and how the remaining person handles the pain of her passing.

The First Noel

         Of all the days she had to die, she had to go and pick Christmas Eve. Time of death was 12.45am Christmas Eve morning.

Instead of Christmas carols being played in the hospital, the only sounds in the ICU were the constant beeping of machines that worked to keep her alive.

         The colored lights in her room were provided by the same beeping machines that registered that she was still with the living. 

         Her chest rose and fell so slowly, I had to blink to ensure I had seen her chest rise and fall. As long as she breathed, she was still here.

         After ten days of fighting the flesh-eating disease and having several pounds of flesh removed from her body, the end was near. The family had made the decision to turn off life support after much deliberation and thorough discussion with the medical staff.

         None of us were ready to let her go, but we could not force her to endure what would be a slow death lying useless in a bed for an unspecified length of time. The hospital had spoken of doing more surgery to try to beat the flesh-eating organisms but they had advised that there was no guarantee that she would even make it through the surgery,

We gathered round the bed, each of us telling her in our own way that we loved her, and it was all right for her to set out on her future journey. We would take care of each other.

One of her brothers held one of her hands and I held the other as she slowly slipped away. One deep breath and it was all over.

         We sat there, too stunned to cry. We just held each other in silence and then we said our individual farewells and slowly walked out of the hospital.

         None of us wanted to go home. We had each decorated our houses for Christmas hoping against hope that she would either be home or at least healing in the hospital. No one could have visualized this woman who was larger than life suddenly being gone.

         Her brothers had come from out of state and were anxious to get on the road, so we stopped at the local IHOP and ate a brief meal and had some coffee and then we hugged once more, and each went our separate ways.

         I don’t remember the drive home. It seemed one minute I was in the restaurant and the next I was standing in the middle of my living room staring at her chair that was mocking me with its emptiness.

         I cast my eye round the room. Everything reminded me of her. There was art on the walls that we had bought at an art party and her tigers, her favorite animal, was represented in pictures and ornaments on shelves.

         In amongst these reminders, Christmas reared its head. I had a set of three angels on the bookshelf along with three small tinsel trees.

Cards were placed willy nilly on shelves and stuck on noticeboards in the home office. Greetings from far and wide.

         All I wanted to do was rip them down and shout that Christmas hadn’t come to our house. How dare these people wish us a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

         Christmas should be a time of happiness and warmth and all I could feel was a bone-chilling emptiness. The color had gone out of my world, and I sincerely doubted that the sun would ever shine again.

         I finally unrooted myself from my spot in the middle if the living room and dragged myself off to bed but sleep was elusive. I lay there looking at the ceiling alternating between crying and staring at nothing in particular.

         I turned on the television and all I could find were Christmas programs or old comedy shows that did not fit my mood. Every carol I heard reminded me of her singing them in the church choir that she had led for many years.

         As I sat there, I thought of all the things I would now have to do. There were papers to be filled out, people to notify of her passing and her celebration of life to be arranged.

I could not do it all in a day even though I wanted it to be over. I wanted to go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow, Christmas morning, and see her face smiling back at me and sitting down to have our traditional Christmas breakfast of eggs, pancakes and bacon.

Now I would get up alone, eat alone and sit there in the silence waiting for someone who would never come home again.

The calendar had rolled round again. She had been gone a year and for some reason I woke in the middle of the night at the exact time she had died last year.

Life had a sense of humor. There was no way I could forget. Each day I walked through, something would occur to show me that I now did it alone. Memories of her came out of nowhere and sometimes it was just too much to handle.

I had to learn to rediscover myself again. For so many years I had been part of a couple. We went everywhere together. Hell, we even worked at the same company.

Who was I now? My life had all new parameters. Over the years we each sacrificed or compromised on some outing or food or movie to make the other happy. Suddenly, I could eat spicy food again and watch silly movies and read to my heart’s content.

I remember the first time I ordered food to be delivered, it was from a Mexican restaurant. She was not a spice loving person. You know what? I even felt guilty!

I barely decorated the house this year. Just a few ornaments here and there and of course the cards that our mutual friends and family members send me to ensure that they still care.

I imagine one year I will wake up Christmas morning and not feel so alone, but not this year, not yet. The pain is still too deep.