I was driving to do some Christmas shopping with my family when we passed the cemetery where my father’s mortal remains are interred. As the massive white marble clad mausoleum came into view I said, “Time to say hi to Dad” and waved. No reaction from my passengers.
“And hi to my old girlfriend too,” I said. That got a reaction.
“She’s buried here too, isn’t she?” my wife said.
“Yep. Died eleven days after her mother.”
“How sad.”
“Never married or had kids,” I said. “Lived in her parent’s house her whole life.”
“I wonder why,” my wife said.
Elizabeth had not lacked in the looks department and, when I knew her, didn’t pick up on any traumas that might’ve showed a pathology precluding her from ever leaving the nest. But then again, I didn’t really know her. Liz could’ve had a contented existence as far as I knew, doting on her nephew, niece, and cats while singing in her church choir and jogging endlessly through town. Life, as someone once said, is what happens to other people when you’re not around to see it.
“No way to know why anyone is who they are sometimes,” I said, still feeling the trace of Elizabeth’s spectral kiss on my lips.
At the store, I took my daughter to the jewelry counter to pick out some earrings for her mother. “She’d like something flamboyant,” Natalie said, fingering a pair of heavy pendants that would’ve probably stretched my wife’s perfectly shaped earlobes to the floor.
“Your mother will like anything you give her,” I said. “Because it’s from you.”
Making a face, Natalie put the bauble back on the rack and said, “It’s crap. The backs are broken.”
“Sharp eye, kid.”
“There’s nothing here I like. Can we go that store in town tomorrow? Where I got her that necklace last year?”
‘Sure,” I said. “Let’s go find your mom.”
Walking through the store filled with holiday shoppers, I felt mildly depressed. I’d been so busy at work helping hundreds of other people have a nice Christmas that I’d given my own family short shrift. Luckily, my wife’s has always picked up the slack but, when Natalie opens her gifts under the tree, I’m usually just as surprised as she is. I’ve also really never liked Christmas. Part of that has to do with the madness at work during the holidays, but also something much older.
Every year my department holds a toy drive for disadvantaged tots and, although we hit a home run every year resulting in the kids getting more stuff than mine does, in the weeks leading up to the main event I’m always anxious I’ll fail them somehow. My wife, whose always helped me set up the “toy store” the past ten years, knows why. Last week, in a quiet moment before the parents arrived, my wife and I stood in silence and surveyed the vast number of toys donated by hundreds of kind people. “Thank again for all your help, honey” I said. “Couldn’t have done it without you.”
Touching me on the arm, Annie whispered, “You did right by that little boy – again,” causing me to almost tear up.
“I forgot I told you about that.”
“I never forgot it.”
When I was a small boy, the Boy’s Club I went to always threw a Christmas party where everyone got pizza, soda, saw Santa, and got a toy. But when I was about eight or nine, I was waiting for my dad to pick me after the party when a father and his small son walked in only to find out Santa and all the toys were gone. Sitting at a table with my soda, I watched the boy’s face crumple and the dad’s body stiffen with what I somehow knew was guilt. Then, as the man led his son back outside, I burst into tears. When my dad finally arrived, he was bewildered to find his son sobbing inconsolably as a counselor frantically tried to figure out what had happened. I never went to that party again.
Looking back on it, that was the day I realized shadows never stray far from light and, even when people are at their most joyous, there’s always someone on the outside sadly looking in. As the years passed, I’d see those shadows appear again and again – watching AIDs patients wasting away while newborns cried in the next ward, faithful innocents preyed upon in beautiful churches, my friend’s widow crying as Easter’s spring glory flowered, the poor shivering outside restaurants while happy splendor swirled within, tucking my daughter into bed knowing another child had no safe place to lay their head, and the list goes on and on. I guess I’ve always lived in that liminal space and, while that might make me effective at my present job, as a guy in a movie once said. “Be careful what you get good at.” There are days I want to chuck it all and sell cars but, if I’m honest with myself, I’ve always been drawn to those shadows; probably because I often feel like I’m on the outside looking in too. Maybe that’s why I like to write, looking for patterns within the shadows and light. If I find any, I’ll let you know.
After getting home from our retail sojourn, I opened a beer and set about making dinner. Taking some chicken breasts out of the fridge, I butterflied them, seasoned them with salt and pepper, dredged them in flour, and placed them into a fry pan with equal amounts of olive oil and butter. As they cooked, I halved a pound of small tomatoes, minced some shallots and, after the chicken was golden brown and resting under foil, threw them into the pan with some white wine and capers until it all reduced down into a sauce while rosemary sprinkled wedges of potatoes drizzled with olive oil baked in the oven. As my wife made a salad, I whipped up a Dijon and garlic vinaigrette, threw some basil leaves into the chicken’s sauce and then, rather artfully I’d say, plated everything and brought it to the table like the waiter I used to be.
“Really good, honey,” my wife said after sampling everything “This would’ve cost eighty bucks easy in a restaurant.”
“If not higher,” I said. “They way prices are going.”
When we were done my wife banished me from the kitchen to clean up and I sat with my daughter on the couch to watch TV. Sitting with my dog snug against my leg and Natalie lying on my opposite shoulder, I half watched the tube while listening to the stiff winds outside rattle my living room windows. Looking at my smart watch, the weather icon said the wind chill made it feel like 13 degrees. Stroking my daughter’s hair and dog’s fur at the same time, I thought about the homeless guy in town who lives in his car because he refuses to go to a shelter. “One day,” I thought to myself, “We’re gonna find him frozen dead in that car.” And just like that, in the warm glow of hearth and home, shadows still found their way in.
After shooing Natalie to bed, my wife made me take the garbage to the curb. Grumbling because I have a perfectly healthy kid who could perform this task, I donned a coat, walked out into the chill, and dragged our oversized and overstuffed bin to the street. Above me the stars were starting to peek out from behind the clouds as the Christmas lights blazing on my neighbors’ houses cast twinkling patterns on the ground. Looking at my dead friend’s house I sighed. The anniversary of his suicide was a few weeks ago and, I must admit, that event put me into tailspin that took me a long time to recover from. Now a new young family was living in his house and, as I watched them pass by windows shimmering with warmth, I smiled. Unlike light, shadows have no weight or presence, they are just absences waiting to be filled. You could also say they are opportunities – if we only had the eyes to see them. Has that what my life has been about? What I’ve always been on the imperfect lookout for? Oblivious to the cold, I thought about my dad, Elizabeth, my lost friend, that little boy from long ago, and knew good things had always come to fill the voids they left behind. Maybe it’s all our jobs to help make that very thing happen which, when you think about it, is what Christmas is truly about. “A light shines in the darkness,” I whispered, my breath condensing in the frigid air, “And the darkness has not overcome it.”
We just have to hold on.