Edelweiss

My dad died at the same age as Mark in the same month, and my mom was the same age as me when death and grief came barreling into her. For many years prior to my dad’s death, it was a tradition for Mark and me to go to Chicago for Christmas. When it was just the two of us it was a pretty easy thing to do, but it got much more complicated to pull off when we added three kids into the equation.

After my dad’s death I couldn’t bear the thought of my mom waking up alone on Christmas Day, and so it became more important to me that we keep up this tradition despite how insane it was to pack up all the gifts, suitcases and tote bags, and drive all day, sometimes through harrowing winter weather, to be with her and the rest of my family. This went on for years until I waved the white flag and said “no more.” Mark and the kids were mad at me because this is what we always did, so I suggested we try for Thanksgiving instead and see how that went.

My mom’s house was small and always too warm, so Mark, Maggie, and Will started staying at my sister’s house a few miles away while Mallory and I stayed with my mom. My mom loved the company, and as we settled in for the night, she’d flip through the channels and every year come across The Sound of Music. She would pour us some of her homemade Irish cream and we’d sit on the couch sipping a nightcap and watch a movie we’d seen dozens of times. Towards the end of the movie, when the VonTrapp family is hiding from the Nazis in the abbey, I once said to my mom, “I’m always so scared for them at this part. No matter how many times I’ve watched this I feel like I can’t breathe until they escape.” “Oh, I know,” my mom said, “I can’t imagine keeping seven kids quiet for that long,” and as a mother of six she had some street cred behind that statement.

This year my mom moved from independent care to the memory care unit of a retirement village as dementia causes her to slowly fade from herself and all of us. Due to Covid it has been impossible for my siblings to see her except through her bedroom window, and for my brother and I who aren’t close by, hard to schedule some kind of phone visit. A few weeks ago, I got an aide’s cell phone number and texted her to get a FaceTime call. She told my mom that she had a big surprise for her and showed her the phone. “Oh it’s my daughter,” my mom said, “that’s my daughter.” The rest of that very short call didn’t go well as she was having trouble getting words out. I talked mostly to the aide and said that my mom was ready to go, that she’d seen and done enough in her life to warrant some rest. The aide started crying and said, “Everybody loves her. All her kids and grandkids, you all love her. I wish you called yesterday. She was so chatty and held my hand and we talked and talked.” I can’t remember the last time my mom felt chatty. I wish I could, but like other times of impending loss, there’s no warning bell to signal that this time you’d better pay close attention because what you took for granted will no longer be.

The last time I saw my mom, sat and talked to her, felt her pat my back when she could see that I was so tired of being sad, was in February. Things shut down a month later, and our Mallory, who sat beside us during our annual watching of The Sound of Music, now lives in Los Angeles. Her plans to come home for Thanksgiving with her boyfriend were scrapped, and the last time any of us shared her presence with a glass of wine over dinner was in March. This Christmas seems like a gathering of beloved traditions and heaving them into a dumpster as a final stripping down to everything but the basics. But it’s also the story of a young, frightened couple that followed a star to Bethlehem to have their baby, and the VonTrapps escaping from their beloved homeland of Austria. In the breadth of this time that has seen so much death and darkness, I don’t think that the weary world rejoices, but maybe it stops for a longer pause to pay attention to who is here, who is there, and who always watches over us.

Merry Christmas.