A light shining in the distance

I practically ran out to the cabin this evening – just before the sun went down – to bring out the little lighted tree that was the last present my dad ever gave me. Mia wanted one for her apartment last year and I bought her one. Angie asked after mine this year, and I said, “No, I’m going to put it in the cabin.” And here it is, December 17, and I hadn’t done it yet. So I ran it out. Discovered that the bottom lights weren’t working and that if I sat it on my desk as I have in years past, not many of the lights would be visible through the window, so I sat it on the desk chair. It’s still not much to look at for being back a ways from the window, but the idea is being able to see it from the house. To know it’s there.

The way it came to be the last present my dad ever gave me was that he was bored one day in the nursing home, back when he still had enough energy to get bored, and he said, “Let’s clip some coupons.”

Working with my elderly male client, I’m getting more practice at being with a coupon-clipper. He was pretty upset the other day when he couldn’t find the zip-lock bag of coupons with no expiration date. He thinks I threw it away, as I’ve been tackling some of his clutter. I might have. (What is it with seniors and coupons? Don’t even get me started on that!)

Anyway, my dad and I sat with the Sunday paper cutting coupons. I saw an ad for the little tree and said, “I’d really like to have a tree like that for the cabin.” He insisted that I take a $20 from his drawer and go get it. I didn’t do it right then, but he remembered as I was leaving for the day, telling me to “Get the $20 and go get the tree.” He was delighted to be able to send me off to get something I really wanted.

That year, Christmas fell a month, almost to the day, before his death, and his little tree was the only one we had. There was no way for it to be a “usual” Christmas or do all the usual things. We just sat it on the piano table behind the couch and said, “Good enough.” It was the next year when I told Donny I had to take it out to the cabin and then shortly afterwards was doing dishes and saw it’s lights through the window. I had to wipe my eyes with sudsy hands. Donny putting the tree out there for me was one of those things someone does for you that you appreciate so much.

And so, the tree is in the cabin again…a little late, but still there.

Now I’m thinking about my proprietary feelings toward it. Usually “things” of all kinds are up for grabs around here…but not that tree…not that last gift. Maybe it’s sentimentality, but I don’t care.

I posted some on grief a while back when a wave of it caught me by surprise. A few readers were surprised by it too – at me still feeling it nearly three years later. So I just want to add here, that I don’t experience grief as something morbid. I don’t have that feeling of grief (that I wrote of then) right now, just the sentimentality or whatever it is. It’s the tree and it’s the time of year too. Certain things about the season are forever different. But that’s okay.

Sometimes grief is like the little tree – a light shining in the distance.