The Christmas Box by Wayne Kirkbride
How more depressing could this year’s Christmas get, thought Julie? With her husband thousands of miles away in Afghanistan on his second deployment and finding out shortly after he returned to duty that she was pregnant, combined with the sudden death of her grandmother – it was just too much to bear.
With Christmas only two weeks away, she wanted to just crawl in a hole and forget about everything – to escape seeing her friends and their husbands and their families with all that Christmas cheer running over.
She hadn’t told her husband about her pregnancy. Her world was upside down. She had found out about being pregnant on the same day her mother phoned to tell her that her grandma had died. She told her mother the good news almost as an afterthought. At least she thought it would be good news if she had her husband home to share it with and didn’t have the conflicting feelings of apprehension, loneliness, and sorrow for her grandmother’s loss and the distress in her own mother.
Grandma was a widow and had been for over 10 years. She took charge after grandpa’s death and made sure her own arrangements for her eventual passing was taken care of, relieving her family from tough decisions. The one thing she never got around to was cleaning out the attic that had years of stored knick-knacks and holiday decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. “Would you help me start clearing things out of the attic?” The question from Julie’s mother had caught her thinking of her husband so far away, and grandma’s burial only three days prior. “Will I be attending his funeral one day”, she wondered sorrowfully. “Of Course”, she replied to her mother. “I need a distraction”.
She had been able to reach her husband by phone at his distant post and he was surprised and sounded happy and excited with the news of their baby. Julie suppressed her emotions and the urge to break down and cry while talking to him. She had to be strong for him. He was in a much more difficult position than she and although she ached for his presence, for his arm around her, she managed to stay strong until the call was over – then she broke down.
The dusty attic hadn’t been disturbed for years it appeared. Age and arthritis had prevented grandma from making the precarious trip to the attic on her own to retrieve holiday decorations for the changing seasons. For the last few Christmases she decorated with an artificial tree that already had lights to go with it. It was smaller than the trees that grandpa and grandma used to bring in from the Christmas tree farms and decorate lavishly and joyfully, Julie remembered. Neatly stacked in one corner of the attic were the Christmas tree ornaments and lights, neatly labeled in three boxes. Julie and her mother were in no hurry to dispose of years of memories. Opening boxes within boxes they fondly lifted cherished treasures of collected ornaments that took years to acquire. Each remembered how grandma and grandpa would alternate colors and decorations from year to year. Julie was reaching into a box when she saw a stack of letters neatly bound with twine. There must have been about two dozen in the group. As she lifted them from the box, she could see they were all addressed to her grandmother and appeared to be many years old, evident by the modest postage and markings on the envelopes’ border of red and blue and indicating they came via air mail.
“Look mom, these are letters from grandpa when he was overseas in France during the War”. Julie’s mother looked surprised. “I never knew about these letters, or that she kept them all these years”, her mother said.
“Open this one and read it to me – I don’t have my reading glasses”, Julie’s mother asked of her. The envelope was dated December 2, 1944.
Carefully unfolding the aged stationary, Julie began to read. “My dearest Carol, I don’t have much time to write this time as we are on the move again. I got your last letter, but I see you wrote it over a month ago. Maybe by the time you get this letter, Christmas will have come and gone. I wish I could be home with you, decorating a Christmas tree and having a turkey dinner like we had before. I’m so happy we decided to marry before I shipped out. Some of the guys in my company are jealous of me because I have someone special back home who writes to me and certainly keeps my spirits up. It isn’t so bad here. I just keep thinking of you and the family we will have when this war is over. That’s what keeps me going. I know from your letters that our being apart has been hard for you too. Hang our special Christmas ornament on your tree and remember me as I will remember you at Christmas time. Love forever, Paul”.
Julie’s eyes were welled up with tears as she read the last line.
Looking up at her mother, she too had tears streaming down her cheeks.
The two women sat silent for a few moments before Julie spoke. “Mom, I have an idea. Let’s take grandma’s ornaments out of here and decorate your Christmas tree with her ornaments this year. I think grandma would be happy”. Her mother brushed aside the tears and nodded in agreement.
Julie’s mother took the rest of the letters with her downstairs to read later. As Julie began to move the ornament boxes from the attic, she felt closeness with her grandmother that she hadn’t felt before. She and her grandmother had much in common. Grandma’s husband – grandpa – was away from her during a war and grandma faced a long separation and loneliness without him. Both were bound by their love to get through the separation. Grandma’s Christmas ornaments would be a symbol of love and devotion and help her carry through this conflict just as it had done for Grandma. Julie felt stronger – and happier than she had felt in days.
