All I Want For Christmas

My son keeps asking me what I want for Christmas. I suspect my husband is egging my son on behind the scenes. My husband is clueless when it comes to gift buying.

When I tell Ian that I already received the ultimate Christmas present 12 years ago, he just gives me that look that says, “Aw, shucks, you have to say that because you’re my mom.”

Children have no idea what a gift they are.

Every family has its ups and downs, and, frankly, this has been one of those down years in our family. At the time we should have been celebrating my son’s 12^th birthday in August, his grandpa, my husband’s dad, went into Brandon Regional Hospital for gall bladder surgery. In the process, doctors discovered he had a serious heart problem and his routine surgery became a three-week hospital stay followed by the announcement that he could no longer live on his own, that he would have to stay with us.

On the same day grandpa was having surgery, we received a call from a hospital in Burbank, Calif. My sister-in-law, Mara, a model and actress who never married, hadn’t been feeling well for months. Doctors initially diagnosed her with irritable bowel syndrome. Now the doctor on the other end of the phone was telling my husband that she had Stage IV non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma with every organ involved. The best thing for Mara, said the doctor, was to bring her home so she could die surrounded by her family. My husband flew to California while I prepared rooms in our home for my sister-in-law and father-in-law.

Ian’s a pretty astute kid who’s been through a lot in 12 years. He grieved with three classmates when they lost their parents to cancer and bravely faced his own father’s battle with the disease. I knew he was made of strong stuff when our Yorkshire terrier died from eating contaminated dog food made in China in April 2007 and he insisted on being the one to carry her tiny body into the vet’s office.

I considered sheltering him from Mara’s fate with euphemisms. Mara took the decision out of my hands.

“You understand that I’m going up to heaven to be an angel with God, don’t you, Ian?” she asked.

In fact, Mara is teaching all of us to appreciate every moment of our lives. She’s literally showing us how to stop and smell the roses. Since she arrived, my house is always filled with roses and wildflowers she picks from my yard and arranges in plastic cups that she decoupages using pictures she cuts out of magazines.

She spends hours watching the birds come to the feeders she religiously fills with seeds each day, and she loves watching the manatees frolic in the water at the manatee viewing center in Apollo Beach.

She and my father-in-law, Bill, have lunch at Panera Bread in Valrico nearly every day. They split a sandwich and then hang around testing the samples and chatting with strangers and friends. Simple pleasures, simple moments.

It was just before Thanksgiving when I received word that my father, living in St. Louis and waging his own battle against cancer, wasn’t faring well. Doctors found a tumor in his brain and were debating whether to operate. My dad took the decision out of their hands. No more radiation. No more chemo. No more surgery. No more feeding tubes. “Don’t be sad. No life for me,” was how he put it in a hoarse whisper on the phone to me. They placed him in a hospice unit the Friday after Thanksgiving and I flew home to say goodbye. He died that Sunday.

We debated having Ian fly to St. Louis for the funeral. In the end, we agreed that, with my psychologist husband working most evenings and caring for his dad and sister, and me helping my mom make funeral arrangements in St. Louis, it would be best to let my friend Mary Owens watch Ian until I returned home.

As always, Ian went along with the plan without a complaint. He wanted to do what was easiest for us during this difficult time.

So, when the following Thursday rolled around and I was preoccupied burying my father and comforting my mother, and my husband was inundated with patients, Ian didn’t bother us with the fact that he was supposed to sing a solo in the Advent program at church.

After school, he used his house key to let himself into the front door and changed his clothes while Mary waited for him in the car to drop him off at church for the concert.

From what my friend, Elaine Speer, tells me, he chose an oversized button-down shirt, possibly one of his father’s cast-offs. He didn’t bother tucking it into his pants. He did, however, put on a tie, but he doesn’t know how to tie a tie so it was hardly up to Windsor standards.

His thick, nearly black hair was way too long and unmanageable so he used some hair gel to paste it into place. And, as always, his glasses were askew, the lenses smudged with fingerprints.

Parents attending the Advent program who didn’t know this little boy’s circumstances must have been thinking, “What kind of parents would send their child to perform in a Christmas program looking like that?”

Elaine said he was just about the cutest thing she’d ever seen. Father Bill said told me he sang like an angel.

Despite the chaos going on around him, this child had the strength, presence of mind and commitment to carry on, knowing full well that his parents would never witness his moment in the spotlight.

My husband and I agreed that, as parents, this was one of the proudest moments of our lives, and we weren’t even there to witness it. How can you top that gift?

D’Ann Lawrence White is a former columnist for The Brandon News and Tampa Tribune.