Christmas-Stuff

As I referred to in my earlier post, I mailed my Christmas presents from Boston over a week and a half ago and they didn’t arrive to Minneapolis in time for Christmas. I waited for the post man all morning on Monday, hoping for a big white box to pop out of his truck and on to our front step. This never happened.

I cried, I felt sad, I felt that I had let my family down. My mom started to cry saying that all she really wanted for Christmas was for me and my sister to be home and for us all to be healthy. My sister started reciting Dr. Seuss saying that Christmas wasn’t about tag, packages, boxes, or bags. I know all these things. Every Christmas special will tell you, that Christmas isn’t about the stuff of Christmas but the feeling of Christmas. I just never thought I would be without the stuff of Christmas.

Even though I didn’t have any Christmas presents to give, Christmas still came.

Every year since I can remember we went to my dad’s best friend’s house for Christmas Eve. Our family is very close with him and his wife and they have always been at our birthday parties/graduations/Christmas ect. This year was different though, the wife of our dad’s friend had been really sick over the last few months after breaking her foot, going into kidney failure (and perhaps a bit of sepsis), and they were not able to have us to their house as a result. The last time I saw her she was in the ICU and had just been taken off of a ventilator. She was barely responsive and looked really sick. I wasn’t expecting much when I went to see her as my mom said she still was really out of it.

As soon as we walked in the room she turned, looked at us, smiled and said “oh my, look at the whole gang who just walked in.” She was just like her old self. Joking, talking, and taking control of the situation. She noticed that I looked a bit blotchy and asked if I was ok. I felt silly telling her I got worked up over not having Christmas presents for my family, compared to what she went through it was pretty insignificant. She pried it out of me and as tears started to well up in my eyes again she turned to a large basket of pink flowers she had gotten recently. “Here” she said “I want you to take these flowers home and every time you feel sad about not having gifts to give look at these and feel better.”

And just like that I did.