She Was Christmas In Our Eyes

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. I love the twinkling lights, the love in the air, family and friends, Christmas dinner, and, of course, presents. 

I lived with my mother, father, and younger brother. Our house was a place filled with happiness and laughter all year round, but especially Christmas. 

Each year on December 1 we would hike out to the middle of the woods behind our house, cut a Christmas tree, and then haul it home to decorate.

We’d stay up late after we decorated and watch our favorite Christmas movies sipping glasses of homemade eggnog. Then throughout the weeks counting up to Christmas we’d go caroling, bake gingerbread houses, watch more Christmas movies, and plan and purchase Christmas gifts for each other. We never did Santa Claus in our home. My mother preferred to give each other presents.

I never really understood why children liked the idea of a fat man in a red suit coming into their houses, eating their cookies and carrots, and leaving them presents. What if he stole something? 

On Christmas morning, my brother and I would race down the hallway and sit by the tree, eagerly awaiting our parents' arrival. We never opened our presents until they were there. Then, we would crazily tear into our gifts, exclaiming in excitement over what we had received. 

After our gifts were opened, we each would give our parents our clumsily wrapped gifts and watched with delight as they opened them, and read the messily done cards. 

That was probably my favorite part. I have always enjoyed giving, and as I got older, I was able to find and acquire more extravagant gifts for my parents each year. 

Then everything changed. It was last Christmas. When I was fifteen years old, I had purchased my mother a silver necklace on a delicate chain that said, Best Mom Ever. I was very proud of that gift. It had cost me forty dollars of my own money.

I don't recall what I got my father. I know he never opened his gift from me that year. None of us opened gifts. 

My mother was a nurse. And a pretty damn good one. She got an emergency call on Christmas Eve, and being the amazing woman she was, she left for the hospital on Christmas Eve. She never came back.

I had gone to bed before she was supposed to come back, so I had no idea something was wrong until Christmas morning when I went downstairs to find that none of the presents were set up under the tree.  

My dad was slumped on the couch, his head in his hands. I remember rushing to him, demanding to know what the problem was, asking for my mother. When I mentioned her, he looked up at me, tears in his eyes. I had never seen my father cry. There was only one thing that could have made my father cry. 

I knew immediately what had happened. I didn't know what had happened at the time, but I knew my mother wasn't coming home, today, or ever.

She had gotten into a car crash, a really bad one. Neither of the drivers had survived. I found it comforting that the other driver, the one whose fault the crash had been, hadn't made it out alive. As horrible as that sounds. 

Christmas ended for me the night my mother died. Christmas had been all about her, it had always been. Our presents from that year are unopened in the attic. Someday I will open them. But not for a long time. 

I don't really remember the year after my mother's death. Her funeral is just a blur in my mind. Black clothes. Red tear-stained faces. A brown casket being lowered into the ground. My father and brother clutching my hands. I'm all they have left now. 

I spent most of that year in my room, drawing. That's all I did. Memories of my mother. Her laughter, it took me weeks to recreate her smile, the exact way she looked when she laughed. Her eyes, a dazzling blue-green. Her lovely long blond hair, so like mine. 

The day I turned sixteen I cut my hair. It was so much like my mother. I cut it off and braided it. I cried into that braid almost every night. I never went anywhere without it. 

We skipped Christmas that year. No presents. No eggnog. No Christmas movies. No Christmas dinner. Nothing to remind us of the person who embodied Christmas in our eyes.

The year I turned seventeen was the year my dad remarried. I hated her, Ann. With her short black hair, and brown eyes. The opposite of my mother.

My little brother, Tucker, liked her. He’d been without a mother for too long. 

We did Christmas that year, but Ann's presence ruined it for me. I didn’t get anyone a gift that year. They got gifts for me. Which probably should have made me feel bad, but it didn't. I didn’t care how they felt. 

I had slowly been slipping into depression since the day my mother died. My father managed to avoid falling into depression. He almost did, but then he married Ann, and then it was like my mother never existed. 

When I turned eighteen, I rented an apartment seven hours away from my family. That was the first Christmas I spent alone.

I managed to keep my apartment clean, somehow. Even being depressed couldn't change the fact that I couldn't live in a space that was cluttered. 

On Christmas Eve I went outside to check my mailbox for the multitude of Christmas cards I was sure I received from family and friends. I never wrote back. Even though I knew I should have. I just couldn't bring myself to respond to the heartfelt letters. 

I almost tripped over a box that had been set on my doorstep. Curious, bent down to open it, and a blond lab puppy jumped up to lick my face. 

I stepped back, tears welled in my eyes. Her fur was the same color as my mom's hair, and her eyes, a beautiful blue-green. 

Although Christmas was still never going to be the same again, I knew that with this wonderful gift I had been given, I would be able to go on. I picked up the puppy and held her close to me. 

“I'm going to name you, Molly. After my mother.” 

I grabbed the letters out of my mailbox and took them inside with Molly. I was going to write back. And then I was going to open the gifts from my mom.

Things were going to get better. I knew it. 

And I was right.