“It’s Christmas!”

“It’s Christmas!”  These are the words we’d hear from the front seat of the car while driving at Christmastime.  We’d lean into Erin’s reaction to our prompting of where to look while tilting our heads and shoulders back to catch a quick glimpse of her mouth open and hard breathing against the window.  We’d follow her wide-eyed gaze looking out the window at the Christmas lights on nearly every house and business we passed shining in the dark.  It didn’t matter if the display was elaborately colored with a dumpy Santa and reindeer in the yard or more simply adorned with white lights and Christmas plaid ribbons.  From the backseat of the car the words “Look at that one!” erupted with joy and were followed by a Christmas carol or traditional Christmas song.  She’d start singing “The first Noel, the angels did say was a certain poor shepherd in a field of a hay!” or “Have a jolly, jolly Christmas!”  “Sing it, Mom!”  We especially loved hearing her sing, “Yellow Snow, Yellow Snow, Yellow Snow!” when it was spitting snow.

Caroling…Each year while our kids were growing up, we’d go caroling in our small town of Fork Union with the church youth group.  Sometimes we would pile into cars, and some years we’d walk down sidewalks.  We’d even walk down side streets as far as we could go or until our hands and feet were numb with cold.  With flashlights, battery-operated candles, and song sheets, we’d warm up with singing carols to all the houses on our street.  We’d turn down Route 15 and Route 6 in search of our seasoned neighbors who would grab a shawl or jacket and huddle on the porch. They came to anticipate our coming each year and would open their door and come out on the porch with a nod, a smile, and eventually start singing along with us.  We knew the visit had ended when Erin and youth spun into “We wish you a Merry Christmas!” We loved these wise folks who had watched Rob, his brothers, and then our boys grow up on Fork Union Military Academy’s campus.  They encountered the Feathers second generation in classrooms, ball fields, and in the dining hall.  They were privy to the daily life of day student cadets playing in backyards and watching them through kitchen windows as our sons walked up and down our street each day in grey sweats carrying lacrosse sticks and bookbags stuffed with practice gear, uniform items, and school books. 

As the youth carolers would venture down to the next home, Rob would go up to these sweet friends and mentors to offer a personal greeting with Erin in tow skipping to her “Merry Christmas!”  A special stop was a small house near the post office where a sweet lady we seldom saw and did not know personally would come out to her porch.  The students always wanted to remember to stop by to sing to “the lady who cries”.  She always wiped away tears as we sang.  Sometimes, we baked cookies to drop off at each house, or we would just gather early to eat pizza.  It was a highlight of Christmas and an event my boys hoped would fall within the days of their visits home during their college days.  It often ended with a bonfire in the backyard. Erin captured the beauty of caroling in our home throughout the year–all year long– in that with each passing thought of Christmas, there was a seemingly appropriate carol or Christmas song she would sing with the expectation for all to join in with her.

Stockings… were “Christmas socks”, as Erin called them.  They were frequently taken down from the stairwell or mantle where they hung throughout the holiday season to be worn by the girls (as instigated by Erin) until they no longer fit.  The Christmas creche on the foyer table was an interactive meeting station for Little People and farm animal figures.  They all came to visit the stable for Christmas.  An occasional Marvel super hero might flip off of the stable roof before the crowd to rescue the baby Jesus (a Diana twist to the story).  The first Christmas after Erin died, I agonized over hanging up stockings or bringing them out at all.  I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to use them again, and I couldn’t look at hers.  I would always pause and reflect at Christmas when seeing the stockings hanging together, usually aligned across a stairwell landing or positioned down the staircase in view from the foyer, on the blessing of having my children together, on their well-being, and on their happiness.  If there were stockings hanging, they were with us during the holidays.  We would see them.  I didn’t know what to do with Erin’s stocking.  A good friend shared a tradition in their family of putting special messages and memories in her son’s stocking at Christmas in the years after his passing.  I got from that conversation that it was important to find something visible to put into our existing traditions to remember Erin at Christmas.  Our family stockings had special meaning.  I would always wrap everything inside, even the little things like gum and life savers. I’d wrap special snacks that I didn’t normally buy except at Christmas.  It made the unwrapping process last longer, and as the kids got older, they’d make a big deal in a humorous way about finding a candy bar or nail clippers wrapped up in their stockings. I kept the stockings and decided to bring them out late on Christmas Eve after Erin passed…no longer hanging across a mantle or down a stairway, but placed lovingly under the tree.

Christmas cookies…were nothing more than slice and bake chocolate chip cookies.  Erin and Diana helped bake them, or what was left of the dough after Rob and the boys found it in the refrigerator.  The cookies and milk were and still are a highlight of Christmas while watching the “Home Alone” marathon on Christmas Eve.  Erin’s Christmas movies and shows were not just a seasonal activity.  We watched all the old Christmas cartoons in summer months as much as during the Christmas season…from “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to “Frosty the Snowman” to “Charlie Brown’s Christmas”.  The actual season began with watching “Curious George Christmas” and “Alvin and the Chipmunks” Christmas movies.  Erin loved them along with shows like “Sesame Street’s Christmas” with the episode of “Christmas Every Day”, which was so typical of her.  What if Christmas could be every day?  To her, the thought was never exhausted.  I can still see and hear the friends of Sesame Street standing in the snow under the street lamp singing, “Keep Christmas with you all through the year.”  Erin did just that dressed in her fleece Christmas pajama pants sitting on her spot on the couch, coloring and watching her Christmas shows. We got to experience the magic of Christmas with Erin through the eyes of a child continuously for 18 years.

The Tree…Christmas was always about the Christmas tree for Erin and will always be what I think of first when I think of her during this season.  She was not focused on the presents or opening them Christmas morning.  It wasn’t especially Santa or his coming, though it was especially exciting after her fourth heart surgery at age 17 when the FUMA dining hall director brought Santa down our lane for a house call to Erin and Diana at the end of the annual faculty kids’ Christmas party.  Erin loved everything about going to church, so the traditions of Advent held as much meaning and excitement as every Sunday with VBS, a respite party, or Mega Camp events trumping all!  The Christmas tree meant everything to her.  My brother, Chris, had two large Christmas trees in his house, one with just lights that stood tall in the foyer against the staircase and the other in the family room.  Erin would sit at the base of this tree during our visits to my brother’s home at Christmastime and look up to the top of it saying, “Wow!!  It’s Christmas!!”.  One year when the girls were small, I caught them sitting opposite of each other at the base of our Christmas tree pulling on the garland which made the tree seesaw back and forth between them.  Erin loved the tree and would perch on the couch in our living room as Rob was decorating our tree as if she was witnessing a miracle in the making as the tree lit up the room.  She’d “ooo” and “aah” with each ornament that was placed on the tree and would draw her arms back and hide her face as “the bird” was put on the tree.  The bird is an ornament, replete with feathers, that holds a special place close to the top of our Christmas tree each year.  Erin was always afraid of the bird…specifically of the feathers on the bird. We are not sure why, but it was a fear that never left her.  I’m thinking it may have started when she was younger, and we’d all go to Kaybee Toys in Fashion Square Mall in Charlottesville on weekend trips to town.  My boys and Rob would push the buttons on all the toys that made noise as we’d walk down the aisles, and they’d wind up the toys that would move across the floor, setting them free from their hoolahoop constraint.  Some of these wind-up toys were small animals with feathered tails that would slap up and down on the floor as they rolled away.  I have a memory of Erin clinging to my neck and hiding her face in my shoulder on one of those visits.  So, when the bird went on the Christmas tree limb, she would first shudder before gathering her courage, sitting up straight, and announcing, “Erin, don’t be afraid of feathers!!  IT’S YOUR NAME!!!”  Whenever the tree lights came on, there was the same shudder of acknowledgement and verbal review in affirmation.

The singing Christmas tree…Erin’s attraction to a battery-operated singing Christmas tree began in her preschool special education classroom at Cunningham Elementary with her teacher, Janice LeSueur, who loves Christmas, Elmo, and Sesame Street as much as Erin.  There was always a singing Christmas tree in Erin’s life that prompted her to dance and sing with delight in the moment.  People with her in that moment, whether they were teachers, kids, or principals would stop to dance and sing along with her.  There was a singing Christmas tree in the PICU during the Christmas season in December of 2015 when Erin had what we thought would be her last big heart surgery and soon before the onset of endocarditis.  I decorated her full-length glass window in her PICU room for Christmas and lined snowmen and Santa figures, globes filled with water and lit up with snowflakes, swirling in the darkness across the window sill.  “Christmas” provided verbal and visual prompting to work toward getting stronger…for getting out of bed to walk….to lap around the circular PICU hallways to find the singing Christmas tree on the counter of the nurses’ station.  It became “Erin’s tree” in the minds of those who met her and for those who frequently stopped with stethoscopes around their necks and with charts in their hands to sing a Christmas song with Erin while doing a dance step in their scrubs and white coats.  That singing tree was replaced after Christmas with a teddy bear singing “Lean on Me” on Erin’s lengthy return to the PICU and 7^th Floor West wing of UVA after Christmas.  Doctors, nurses, technicians, and orderlies would pause as they passed us to join in the singing of a verse or chorus of “Lean on Me” with Erin as we’d wheel up and down the hallway in her wheelchair for a break from her hospital room.

Christmas….was about the lights and the music for Erin and the togetherness of people who stopped in the moment to share a connection of a common heart and spirit that lies within us all.  She had a way of getting your attention and drawing you into her world.  She had no doubt you would not want to miss whatever she had to share with you.  She would watch for it to capture you in the way it did her. My joy was watching Christmas evolve around her and in looking deep into her eyes to see the glimmer of happiness she shared with others in the moment she mentioned what she saw to someone around her.  It was much the same in our home on a daily basis when Erin had something to share.  She set the expectation–demanding that we stop, get on a level of her choosing, and connect to an experience with her in the moment with no apology.  She did not naturally consider that the activity in which we were previously engaged could be more valuable than sharing a special moment.  She imposed Christmas on those around her with common spirit and a feeling of heartfelt warmth amongst other people who dropped their guard for a just a moment to do the same.

This Christmas…as I look at Erin’s little fir tree in my yard lit in the dark night of this season with her favorite Disney characters dancing in the branches, I am warmed by the spirit of this child’s memory that I hold close to my heart.  It was her connection to the world that I worked hard each day to see clearly, to understand, and to be near.  And, as I drop my guard a bit more in this third Christmas without her with us, I’m realizing the music of Christmas in carols and tender songs opens my heart and renews a memory that–even in loss– I love this music and that hearing it rekindles joy inside.

 I’m remembering that I love Christmas.

I’ve always loved Christmas…I love the joy in gathering with family but know it now comes with an acute awareness of Erin’s absence clearly marked among them. This was especially true the first Christmas without Erin.  We were getting ready to sit down for Christmas dinner.  With a large family, we’ve always had a card table connected to the larger table, so we could all eat together in one room.  Erin would always sit at the end of a card table to give her more elbow room and some space from the noisy crowd.  It gave the person sitting with her a pathway to a quick exit if she got agitated and needed a break.  Rob caught my eye as I was bringing a plate of food to the table and nodded toward the card table pulling a chair up to the end and taking the seat next to it.  I joined him on the other side of the table.  Our eyes locked every now and then during that meal that was filled with hearty conversation as it should.  He whispered once that he didn’t want her to be left out, and I found comfort in that knowing look.

The Old and The New…There will be joy that grows stronger with each year and that will be met with both old and new traditions and new people in our lives who do not remember Erin or have never met her, like my grandsons and people we’ve met in our new home community of Farmville.  I’ll linger looking at the old pictures and feel that dull stab in my heart in realizing once again that there will never be new photos of Erin and wishing I had taken so many more.  Last Christmas, I asked my grandson, Wyatt, what he wanted for Christmas.  He was then, and still is, enamored with Batman and wanted Batman toys and pajamas.  I started thinking about my boys wearing super hero costumes at Halloween and how they played and slept in them through the years.  I went through many shoeboxes of photos looking for pictures of these costumes to show Wyatt of his dad and uncles.  I found many that pictured the boys in stages of togetherness at a variety of ages and thought about how, even though they don’t live together anymore, they have remained so close, talk often on the phone, and coordinate their schedules to be together at Christmas and for vacation weeks at the beach.  It means everything to have our children together through the circles of their lives, as Joni Mitchell sings in “The Circle Game”.  I made a video of the boys’ circles in pictures and song as a final gift last Christmas.  I cried a little looking at pictures of all of boys and Diana with Erin and probably would have been in tears even if Erin was still with us.  I ended with a grateful heart for having this special collection of photos, a collection that reflects our lives through the years and that allows me to remember so much of their childhoods.

Yet, there will be new pictures made of all I hold close to my heart in the here and now.  I’ll take and post even more pictures than I used to do.  Because in everything I have learned in these past few years, I value the very most time spent together making new memories.  I know what it means to capture experiences in pictures and have told my kids to get used to it.  I know what it means to be truly grateful, to make the most of now and what lies ahead.  I value connectivity—being connected to what is really important. 

The Erin tree…I need that little lit fir tree in the yard at Christmas.  I stand in the cold and look at it when I arrive home after work before going in the house.  I peer through the curtains at the window as I pass through the living room before I go to bed at night and when I think of her.  I think about all the stories behind the ornaments and how those characters added to Erin’s character and became a part of who she was in life.  They provided scaffolding for her communication with others…her different voices, temperaments, and attitudes.  She was sweet and sour, kind and obstinate. She made her presence known boldly and sometimes shockingly.  Erin was a light in our lives; and in this season, I remember the constant Christmas joy she offered others in ways only she could uniquely communicate— ways that let you know just how much she loved you. 

Merry Christmas, Erin.