Silent Night

Yesterday I was reading online about a story telling event coming up and the theme was music. It said to come tell a true story about music in your life. A song from when you were young that you loved or one you couldn't stand. It said no notes or props and you have 5 minutes to tell the whole story with a beginning a middle and an end.

Well being that Christmas has barely passed by and our tree is still up I thought of Silent Night.
Now anyone that knows me knows that Silent Night makes me cry. Just the thought of the words will bring me to tears. And I thought of all of the things in my life that have brought me to this point. I was trying to think of where to begin.

Do I start when I was young and how my mother loved Christmas? So many gifts, and that she would put up two Christmas trees in our living room one with traditional decorations and one with decorations we had made. She would save the ones we made from year to year and decorate with them. But it always seemed as we were decorating you know five kids and a couple parents and next thing you know there would be an argument over something and someone was getting in trouble and someone was going to their room. Well fast forward a few years and I just learned to avoid that whole experience and would not be around when it came time to decorate the tree. If your not there you can't get in trouble.

Dad who didn't have a long fuse or a lot of patience for the holidays,  I remember him saying he didn't always know how to act because he didn't have a father while growing up. I was a little older when I heard of how he lost his father at Christmas.

Lets flash back about 40 years to 1950 my father he is about 7 years old and the tree is decorated and the house is all ready for Christmas and his father passed away on Christmas Eve. Well for those of you who didn't know back then in Ohio where my dad lived people didn't get laid out at a funeral home they were laid out in their own home. So there it is Christmas morning my dad and his two brothers and two sisters having Christmas with their dad laid out in a casket in their living room.
My uncle the youngest in their family recently told me that he didn't remember that Christmas he was only two but that his sisters had told him that he played with a car he got for Christmas along by his father that day.

We have gone from the 1970's to the 1950's and now to 1990 my grandmother, my dad's mom passed away on December 20. My grandmother loved Christmas. She always had a beautiful tree and it was the same every year and when I was a kid of my dad's brothers and sisters there was a time when we all lived within a mile of my grandma. That was 15 of 16 cousins most of which were young children at the time. We would all go to grandma's house on Christmas. She had a little chalk board by the front door and we would sign in when we got there. She would always take a picture of our names all crammed together. By 1990 however we weren't all as close in proximity and weren't all going to be able to go to grandma's for Christmas. But there we all were on Christmas eve at mass for my grandmother's funeral. Then back to her house for the wake. And the picture I have posted before that the whole family is in except for me. I went back to work.

I know I thought what a tragedy Christmas is for this family and how sad that is just to think such a thought.

So another 10 years have passed and I am now an adult and have found my way around the sadness that comes with Christmas. I have found that if I decorate the tree alone that there is no arguing. I just found as I got older my fuse got short around the tree and it was easier for me to just do that part alone.

2004 Christmas eve and there I am sitting in the same Church that we had my grandma's funeral all those years ago. Me and my youngest sister and her husband and her beautiful little baby boy. And that is the day that I remember for the first time that when the song Silent Night started to play and the words just rang in my heart. That little boy laying in his carrier next to me who when he breathed it sounded like a giggle. That little flap in his throat didn't close all the way and you would hear hee-eee, hee-eee.

By this time I have reached beyond the years that I would ever have a child of my own and this little baby was about the most beautiful thing in the whole world and all of my life and this reality all mixed together and when I heard the words, "Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace." I just started to cry. Still to this day I see the image in my head. Him in his little green onsie with a Christmas tree on the front.

Another 12 years later and I am sitting with my mom on Christmas Eve. She is bedridden after her second stroke and I am spending the evening wrapping presents and we are watching old home movies and I know in my heart this will probably be our last Christmas together and please God don't take her on Christmas.

But my mother the most stubborn person I know, knew that wasn't the way the story was going to end. We had our Christmas, just like in the past. The five of us all were together with her we shared gifts and stories and watched those home movies and there next to the fire place was that same tree.
That tree we decorated as kids. Now itself over 40 years old, with an ornament hanging on it that said Happy 40th Birthday from 2009.

So we have come to the end. This Christmas it was not the same. Now my mom is gone. But we went to church on Christmas Eve with my youngest sister and her husband and that little baby boy who is now 12 years old. There he was sitting across from me and when I heard the music start and I looked at his face and I heard hee-eee, hee-eee in my head and those words "Holy infant so tender and mild, Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.

I don't know if that is the kind of story they are looking for but that is the story that came to me.