(This ‘sermon’ is based on the book, The 13th Gift which is a true story written by Joanne Huist Smith. Because she wrote it in the first person and it is her story, I turned it in to a letter from her to me, so that I could represent the integrity of the book in my retelling of it.)… I begin…..
It has been 18 years since I received the first letter from Jo, my friend from Dayton Ohio. Jo is a reporter for the Dayton Daily News and since writing this letter her children have grown and she is now a grandmother. But, when she wrote me, she was a recently widowed woman with three young children.
November 2000
Dear Missy,
It is a year later and I am finally able to write and tell you about how I survived the holidays last year after Rick sudden death. As you know he was due to have surgery on his heart to replace a valve. He had chosen to wait until after the holidays feeling that if he was recuperating from open heart surgery, the holidays would not be merry and bright for the family. And…we know now it was not the right decision. He died in his sleep eight weeks before Christmas leaving me and my three children. Before his death, I thought we were a solid family living the good life. In an instant, I realized how fragile life could be.
And, almost as a cruel joke, Christmas still was on the calendar. I found no comfort or joy in the approaching holiday, only memories that cut at my heart like broken pieces of a treasured Christmas ornament. I stopped singing. It hurt even to breathe. I wanted to banish the holidays from our lives. It took everything I could do to get the children up and to school each morning. The paper I work for gave me leniency in my work hours at the office, and offered to allow me to work from home, but I liked the office and the work as it allowed me to focus on anything but the sadness and ache I felt.
Looking back on those two months, I am ashamed to say, the kids were neglected by me. If it had not been for my sister showing up with casseroles and groceries each week, they might not have been fed. I don’t remember doing laundry and am well aware I did not clean the house. And still the holidays dared to approach.
But this is not a story of the depths of my depression, but how 13 gifts showed me life within my grief and sorrow and put me back on a track to living again.
It began at dawn on December 13th of last year. Megan, who was then ten, woke me up telling me that she and her brothers had, once again, missed the school bus. I got up from the couch where I had been sleeping since Rick’s death and woke up the two boys, Ben who was 17 and Nick who was 12 but who was acting more like a teen ager every day. I screamed to them to be in the car in five minutes and that we would have granola bars and bananas for their breakfast as we drove to their schools and then I hurried to get ready myself. I rushed out of the house to start the car and warm it up a bit as it was a cold grey Ohio in December day. In my rush, I nearly knocked over a poinsettia plant which was sitting by our front door. Meghan saw it and her face lit up. She remarked how pretty it was.
And that was and is Meg… ever hopeful… She asked where it came from and asked if we could bring it in the house.
I knew the cold would kill the plant if we left it outside but bringing that plant into the house offered as much appeal as inviting in a wet, rabid dog for the holidays. I totally understood Scrooge. I wanted to go to bed and wake up on December 26th. No shopping, No baking, No tree with lights. My sister had offered to take the kids for the holidays and I had begun to think that might be my solution for the holiday. I did not want to make memories and the the ones I had hurt. Christmas is supposed to be about family, and mine had a larger-than-life-sized hole. I did not see how the flower could fill it. Rick was not there.
Then the clock struck 7 which pushed me back in to my mom mode and I yelled for the boys to get in the car. Meg begged to take the plant inside and appealed to her older brothers as they came to the door. They did not see what my fuss was all about and carried it in to our kitchen. As they did, they found a homemade Christmas card inside the bag in which it came. It read: ‘On the first day of Christmas your true friends give to you one poinsettia for all of you’. While Meghan converted the note to song, I thought at that moment that it did not feel as though we had many friends. Telephone calls and people visiting us had stopped and there were no cards but only bills in our mail box. This was not the fault of our friends. They tried to be nice and helpful but comments like Rick is at peace and is in a place where there is no pain, no worry, and no angst were like salt in my wounds. I found no comfort in those platitudes and preferred not to hear them so I did not answer messages or phone calls and finally they stopped.
My sister dropped off another casserole while I was at work, and we sat as a family that night and ate it. We had not done that in a while and it felt good. The four of us needed to be there for each other and instead we had been pretty much on our own, licking our own wounds, instead of holding up each other in our pain. The dinner conversations surrounded the plant and who could have put it on our door. We had no clue.
My sister was pretty adamant that the kids needed to have presents on Christmas morning to open, and said that she was happy to pick some up for me but I thought I could do it on my own, so we made arrangements that the next day she would pick them up at school and have them for dinner, while I went shopping. I would like to say the evening was a success, and even though I went to the stores… I picked up my kids at my sister’s home with nothing hidden in the trunk of my car. As much as I tried to pull it together to make some sort of Christmas for my three children, I ended up running out of the store in tears and also making a pretty big spectacle of myself at the mall. And I was heartbroken listening to my children discuss what it was they thought I might have bought for them on the drive home.
When we arrived home, another gift was left on our door. It was two bags of bows. I have to share with you that when I first saw the bows I was angry that someone was forcing me to have Christmas. I threw them away in the trash and told the kids to go to bed. But when I awoke the next morning, I found that my daughter had taken the bows from the trash and stored them in her bed side table. And my older son Ben asked if he could have a few for presents he had already bought for the family. I realized… Christmas was going to happen whether or not I participated in it or not.
And the next day gift wrapping arrived and the following day gift boxes. In the next days until, little presents were left for us each day, always with the same poem from the twelve days of Christmas. We began to look forward to what was going to be there. We looked forward as a family to something again. We begin to really wonder who it was that called themselves our true friends and was doing this nice thing for us. We hid by the door to catch them… we hid by windows on our second floor to see them…. but they were always ahead of us and obviously did not want to be found out.
And somewhere in those days, we began to talk about Rick. I realized that the children had been frightened to talk about their dad in front of me for fear it would upset me and make me cry. And I explained that we needed to share our emotions if we were going to move on and that meant doing a lot of crying even though it hurt.
And somewhere in those days, we began eating meals as a family again, we cleaned our house and even decorated a little for Christmas. And well, on Christmas when the twelfth present arrived at my back porch with a little artificial tree and twelve brass bells on it and the poem:
‘On the Twelfth Day of Christmas
Your true friends gave to you…
Twelve Brass Bells
Eleven Christmas Mice
Ten Dancing Santas
Nine candles
Eight Cookie Cutters
Seven Golden Apples
Six Holiday Cups
Five Angel Note Cards
Four Gift Boxes
Three Rolls of Wrapping Paper
Two Bags of Bows
And One Poinsettia
For All Of You.’
This final card had another message on the back:
We hope in some way we have made your Christmas a little easier. Someone did this for us once. You are in our thoughts and prayers. The note was signed “Your Friends”
And that was when I realized I had been given a thirteenth gift. I had thought that these gift givers were generous people and that they were people that were happy and whole strangers to loss. The months before Christmas had been so painful for me, I did not think that others could have experienced what I had. How silly of me.
These people knew the power of the twelve gifts because they had endured the same pain. Their compassion for my family came from a deep knowledge of the sweetness and the sorrow of the season, when joy and grief intertwine. The idea that someone had helped them survive a Christmas, just as they had helped us warmed me. I knew then that this coming Christmas will be our turn to sing, our turn to carry on this tradition of kindness and giving.
Love, Jo
When I knew I was going to share her story with you, I wrote Jo and asked her what has happened to the 13 Gifts since she wrote me a decade ago.
She wrote back and told me that her family had made a commitment that first Christmas after Rick died when they were the recipients of the gifts that they would carry on the lessons of the gift givers in their own special way.
She also wrote:
It took me until last year to finally find out who the people were who had helped my family in such a special way. They live in next town over and we probably have crossed paths numerous times over the years. I asked them their story and why they gave me the gifts and they said that they had a baby who died and someone gave them anonymously little gifts that first year and it helped them get through the holiday season. Now they do it every year as a way to memorialize their baby. It makes them happy. They said that most years the families they give their little gifts to never knew the identity of their true friends. I asked them why the secrecy was so important. And they said what I knew to be true… The mystery would provide some relief from the pain, especially if their where children in the family.
Through this experience in my life, I have learned how to celebrate the Christmas Season while keeping Rick’s memory close. The power of the gifts I received lies in the understanding that joy and sorrow can exist comfortably and without guilt.
The gift givers did not want recognition. Call it giving back or paying it forward, they had taken the kindness shown to them by others as a challenge to live a worthy life. My family has taken on that challenge. Folks have over the years asked if my children and I have become gift givers. I always tell them that we remain inspired by our true friends and then I change the subject by luring them into another conversation. Let it always be a mystery.
Love, Jo
The End.