Rainbow Valley Collection, Grey Christmas

Grey Christmas

As my car crested the hill overlooking the village, I made the decision to jam on the brakes, much to the annoyance of the driver of the pick-up truck that was close on my tail. Ignored the middle finger salute from the driver as the truck quickly rounded me, before it disappeared in a swirl of snow.

I edged my own car over onto the shoulder of the road and turned off the engine. Then I turned the key halfway back again, opened the driver side window a few inches, then switched the key off again.

With the pickup truck gone, and the engine silenced, the quiet evening closed in. I used to stop up here. Often. I've never grown tired of looking at the village from this vantage point, especially at this time of year, with the extra lights highlighting some of the trees and outlining many of the houses. It was early still, just dark, but it had been a long week, and a very long day. As I watched, the distant lights began to dance before my eyes, and I realized that hot wet tears were streaming down my cheeks.

"Jesus, I'm tired," I said. Out loud. Then, because I was alone, I smiled slightly, through my tears.

"Idiot," I added.

The wind was starting to pick up and a light drift of snow began to swirl through the open window of the car. It reminded me of one of my favourite poems, Robert Frost, 'Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening'.

Except, of course, the closest woods were more than a kilometre away, and my vehicle had six cylinders, not horses that danced in the cold, while their harness bells softly jingled in the night.
I listened. Hard. But I couldn't hear any bells. Not even off in the distance. Some things should never change, like the Christmases from my childhood on the family farm. Those times had been magical, had included horses and sleigh rides... and oranges. That large round lump in the bottom of my childhood stocking had delivered almost as much excitement as the carefully wrapped gifts under the tree.

But today, my thoughts were of Mary, because some folks just shouldn't die. And as soon as the angry thought entered my mind, I also recognized that I was being ridiculous. My old friend Mary had had a good long life – 90 years full. And yet, I also knew I was going to miss her. Was missing her. Desperately.

I wondered at the mystery of life... and death. Here it was, the night before Christmas, and here I was sitting in a car, in the dark, in the cold, feeling much like a fool, staring at the Christmas lights in the distance, and wishing for sleigh bells and oranges, and the warmth of a home, and someone waiting for me there.

Since Sarah's death, I'd mostly ignored Christmas. Refused to get a tree, put up lights or listen to carols. Christmas days, I'd gone to visit the only person in the village who seemed to understand. The only person who'd never told me 'to move on" or "get over it". Mary. The person who had also now left me. Alone.

Because there was no getting over it... I'd realized that some time ago. Sarah had been my Christmas, my best gift ever, and a large part of me had died that day along with her. I could never forget the cold horror of the diagnosis, the endless and agonizing rounds of chemo and radiation, and the doctor's own tears when he'd sat us both down to say the treatment wasn't working.

The cancer had raged on, until Sarah had become a thin shadow of her former self. I'd begged her not to give up, refused to admit that life could go on without her... and then that final nightmarish day when she just went to sleep in my arms and never woke up again.

I reached up a hand and brushed at my wet cheeks, and for a moment let my head fall forward to rest on the top edge of the steering wheel. It would be so easy to just put the car in drive and keep driving. Leave this place, our house, those memories behind.