The Saddest Christmas I Remember

Love is a season And holidays mark the seasons, like signs in the road Reflecting the bumps in our journey, but showing us a way back home... Sixteen, in pajamas, watching the rain pelt down It was long past midnight, Christmas eve Twinkling lights on one house across the road, stared back at me It was if they were trying to fill our void with color The block was filled with a hundred black windows And the blackness somehow seemed more appropriate There was no Christmas tree in our house this year I suppose Dad felt it was too soon, or perhaps just the effort to get through each day had taken all the strength he had... We had stayed up and watched a Christmas program together... It was Perry Como, I think....somehow I remember how he sang "Ava Maria"... My brother had come home from the Air Force earlier that week He had helped bring us a bit of cheer....at least for awhile... but he had been called back to duty, and I missed him terribly... The house was silent after Dad had gone to bed I wasn't sleepy....and it was lonely looking out at the cold night It seemed the whole world was sleeping, getting ready for the sun to shine on Christmas morning... I started to head for bed, but noticed a light had been left on in the front coat closet I opened the door, and looking up, to pull the chain, I noticed the box... The little box that kept the sugar cube house It was one that Mom and I had made together when I was 8 years old... Little sugar cubes stacked into walls and a roof, glued together with red frosting. We had copied one out of her Ladies' Home Journal....surrounding it with little trees, and people skating on a mirror for a pond, things we had found at the 5 and 10 cent store Carefully packed away last year, on Mom's last Christmas.... Throughout the night, I sat in the dimness of the house, laying out the sugary scene on the fireplace mantel....as Mom would have done . When the freckled morning moved into day... I woke on the sofa...Dad sitting next to me. He had covered me with a warm blanket. He held me and we cried together. After breakfast....he disappeared outside, and soon came in carrying a sorry looking branch from our old evergreen tree. We decorated that bedraggled branch...it wasn't the most beautiful tree we had ever had But it brought Christmas back to my family... For Constance La France's contest "Your Saddest Christmas Ever" Carrie Richards