The 13th Gift (21 page)

“Christmas Day 1990. Keeled over in a bowl of mashed potatoes.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, other than “I’m sorry.”

“The point is, I moved on. I’m happy. Remarried,” she says, flashing the diamond on her left hand. “There is life after a death, if you’ve got the guts to live it. The way you grabbed that sales clerk’s tie, honey, you’ve got it.”

A balding guy, maybe seventy, jumps out of a sedan and opens the car door for my new friend. She waves as they pull out of the parking lot. I marvel at how casually she was able to share her story and wonder if I will be like her in a decade or so. While I can’t imagine myself remarried, I do hope I have the courage to step up and share what I have learned with others in need.

I have spent the months since Rick’s death inside a bubble of grief and fear. But in these last eleven days, as I venture outside that protective cocoon, I have met such a hodgepodge of wonderful people: Goodwill Charles, the soldier at Ponderosa, Neal’s wife with the poinsettias, and now the MasterCard lady—every one of them teachers on this new journey I am traveling. They are experts in the art of moving on, forgiving mistakes, and celebrating memories even if they hurt. I still have so much to learn.

I cross Nick’s furnishings off my list and drive back to Bellbrook. I still have presents to buy, but now it is time to get the
kids involved. Today, I will honor the request of Rick’s coworkers and let each of them select a special gift.

The boys lobby to shop at an electronics store. Megan agrees, but doesn’t show the same level of excitement as her brothers. We’re walking out the door when she asks me to wait a minute. She runs up to her room and comes back downstairs with a small backpack, which she loops over her shoulders.

“What have you got there?” I ask.

“Tell ya later.”

Inside the store, Ben takes off to browse, while Nick drags Megan and me to a display of televisions. While I tell each of the kids the gift they select must be reasonably priced, Nick goes straight to a $1,000 plasma flat screen. Rather than get upset, I just laugh.

“It won’t fit in the car. Besides, we can’t afford it.”

We settle on a nineteen-inch set for his bedroom.

“It’ll do,” he says approvingly.

We find Ben talking to a salesman about a stereo system for his car.

“Uh … I kind of blew my speakers the other night,” he tells me.

“You may not be getting the keys back for a while.”

He shrugs and turns up the dial on the display model.

“This is what I want,” he says. “It’ll give me something to look forward to.”

With the boys’ selections made, we meander the aisles with Megan. We show her video games, an electronic diary, a purple
karaoke machine. She’s not interested. This little girl, who tossed a bag of socks across the family room one Christmas because it wasn’t a Barbie doll, can find nothing she wants.

She snuggles close to me as we walk. When Ben tries to excite her with a handheld, video basketball game, she doesn’t respond.

“What gives?” he asks.

“Remember how Daddy always went shopping on Christmas Eve morning and brought home lunch for all of us?” she says. “He got his shopping done in under two hours.”

Megan stops walking and asks me, “Can I please take Daddy a present? I brought it along in my backpack.”

I have not mentioned her dad all day, hoping to stoke this holiday glow we’ve been building. Maybe that wasn’t my best idea. While I visit Rick’s grave at least once a week, I have not taken the kids since the funeral. I go there to talk to my husband, and to cry. That’s not the ending I want for this day.

Ben takes the decision out of my hands.

“Let’s go together, Mom,” he says. Nick agrees.

We pay for our purchases and make Calvary Cemetery our destination. As we walk out to the car, I vow to make another shopping trip myself to select a special gift for Megan.

“We won’t stay long,” I say, driving the winding lanes of the cemetery past crypts guarded by stone angels and rows of headstones marked
BELOVED
.

Colorful poinsettias and Christmas wreaths with red bows don’t have the same welcoming effect here that they have on a house, church, or a store where life bubbles around them. As the snow turns to a chilly rain, fading ribbons and freezing blooms give the place an unloved and lonely look.

Almost immediately I regret coming here.

Megan steps solemnly from the car and walks over to the gravestone marked
THE BIG DAD
.

Etched on the marble is a mountain with a brook bouncing over stones below it. I selected this design because it reminded me of a clearing where we stopped to rest in Glacier National Park in 1993.

“This is where I want to spend eternity,” Rick had said, marveling at the wild beauty and solitude of our perch
.

It was not long after that serene moment that we realized we were lost. Our leisurely hike turned into a nine-hour trek through wilderness as we searched for any landmark that could guide us back to civilization. Rick had carried an exhausted, six-year-old Nick on his shoulders and Megan, then four, in his arms, until we found a park ranger station
.

We spent nine hours lost in vegetation taller than the littlest among us. Even though we were covered in mosquito bites by the time we returned to our campsite, that wasn’t the worst of it. Crossing a rickety suspension bridge over a mountain gorge, single file, traumatized us all a little that day. Dusk was approaching and that was bear country; we couldn’t turn back. I crossed first to make sure it was safe. I wanted Rick there with the kids if it wasn’t. Once safely on the other side, I sang to Megan as she tiptoed over the swaying expanse. Nick ran. Ben was more cautious, walking slowly, looking down a lot. We held our breaths as the bridge bowed under Rick’s weight, but we survived with a heck of a story to tell
.

Wind whistles through the bare trees of the cemetery, creating its own eerie music. I’m thinking this is no place for kids two days before Christmas, when Megan pulls from her backpack the seven golden apples given to us by the gift givers.

I had forgotten all about them.

“I want to decorate his tree,” she says.

Before Rick died, we had been looking for a larger house in the country, one with some acreage and lots of trees. That was his retirement dream.

After his death, I bought three cemetery plots, a requirement at Calvary to ensure my husband would always have a tree beside his grave. Rick had dreamed of building a home in the country one day, surrounded by pin oaks, walnuts, and maples. He never realized that dream, but I made sure he would rest eternally in the shade.

Megan offers us each an apple to place on the tree. The newly planted gingko is little more than a sapling, but our apples are small, and the branches hold their weight. Though I had my doubts about coming here, it feels good to include Rick in the holidays, even in this small way.

“They’re perfect,” Ben says.

As the apples sway in the wind, my daughter begins telling her dad the story of the gift givers. We all join in recounting the Christmas mystery as if he were standing here listening. We tell him about Nick’s escapades on the roof, chasing the car, and the feast we plan to share with our true friends on Christmas Eve. Nick adds my exploits in his bedroom atop a tipsy Lego bucket to the story.

“Mom had a lump on her head the size of a golf ball,” he says, though I declare it was hardly the size of a small gumball.

It has only been a day, and already the tale is growing. It feels right to be here sharing this story with Rick. We are moving on, healing, but we will never forget him.

Megan is singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as we
walk back to the car. Nick finishes the carol by adding stanzas with extravagant eleventh- and twelfth-day gifts, including the plasma television and a computer.

The drive home is quiet, but no one is crying. I think we’re all tired from the day of shopping. It’s good to know that we can visit Rick’s grave together and talk to him without the cold grip of anguish following us home.

A few blocks from the house, Ben sees a neighbor struggling to pull a Christmas tree out of the back of his minivan.

“Slow down, Mom.”

My eldest rolls down the car window and calls out, “Need a hand?”

I am so proud that I reach over and hug him.

“If there’s a gift at home don’t open it without me,” he says, climbing out of the car.

Our true friends were indeed bold today, leaving a package on our porch in the middle of the day. We don’t peek inside until Ben returns. Our eleventh gift turns out to be the most tasteful: a plateful of eleven edible mice wait to be nibbled. There are even bits of cheese scattered around the plate.

The creatures are made of chocolate-dipped maraschino cherries and Hershey’s Kisses, and each has two almond slivers for ears. Their eyes and noses are painted on with icing.

“They’re so cute. We shouldn’t eat them,” Megan says.

I pop one into my mouth. It’s a sweet treat to revive us after the long day out. Then three sets of hands are grabbing their
share. Before I think to write down exactly how they were made, the mice become history. Each of the kids had gobbled three, and I ate the other two.

This time we don’t forget to pull the card out of the package. It’s another elaborate one, with a Christmas tree adorned with maroon-colored ornaments.

“The decorations on the card look just like ones hanging on our tree,” Nick says.

“That’s uncanny,” I say.

“Na, they probably just saw them from the window.”

I read the card out loud this time.

“Rats,” Megan says, devouring bits of cheese from the plate. “Wish we had more mice.”

A
DREARY GRAY
mist hides houses and holiday decorations early Christmas Eve morning, like a theater curtain before the opening of a play. I suspect our gift givers will want to spend Christmas Eve with their own families, so I rise at dawn to put our oversized bird into the oven. I want the turkey juicy and golden before noon, in case they put in a lunchtime appearance.

“Just a few hours until showtime,” I say to myself, after rising before six a.m. because I’m too excited to sleep. Tree lights will twinkle, the table will be set, and our true friends will step onto the stage.

It seems ages since the first gift magically appeared on our porch, that rain-soaked little poinsettia our first guidepost toward healing. Could our gift givers have known just how much we needed their presence, or did they have any idea how much they had given us this year?