Surprise Christmas

by AUDREY CARLI

How you can help improve the Christmas of someone who lives alone. © Getty Images - Jupiterimages

I couldn’t get my widowed mother off my mind on Christmas Eve. She lived over a thousand miles away and there was no way I could leave my husband and two children to ease her loneliness on her first Christmas without Dad.

But we each talked to her by phone before she planned to go to the nearby shopping mall to do some last minute browsing before attending the Christmas Eve church service at seven.

“At the mall, there’ll be music in the background. The decorations will be bright and cheerful. I’ll see families and couples together. Some people will be alone like I am—so I’ll not feel alone!”

After we returned from church, our family watched Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” on television; I thought about Mom. I prayed for her to have an unexpected surprise that would make her holiday special. Our small town was friendly and most people knew each other. She could have a peaceful time at the mall chatting with others. She would visit with people after church, too. But I knew she would miss Dad and shed some lonely tears. I hoped the tears would be few and smiles would replace them.

I awakened early on Christmas morning and phoned Mom. I knew she would be awake early for her devotions.

She answered the phone with such cheer, I felt inspired. “Honey,” she said. “I had a family Christmas last night!”

Joy sang in me. “How, Mom?”

She said she had been sitting, having tea and a cookie at a mall shop when Cindy Mitchell and her six- and seven-year-old daughters, Carrie and Tina, stopped to chat. “Cindy’s husband died from cancer, as I mentioned, and she longed for a family Christmas. Her parents were driving from Montana but were delayed by a snowstorm. So they took refuge in a motel. Cindy asked me to go to church with them as her parents had planned to do. She also asked me to join them afterward in their home for Christmas Eve snacks. So I did. It was glorious! I had a family Christmas, after all. And so did Cindy and her children. They hugged me good-bye when I left. We’ll visit again in their home and in mine. Her parents will be there by noon today.”

“Mom, Cindy and her girls were an answer to my prayers for you to have a special Christmas after all. In church last evening I shut my eyes and closed my hand like I’d be holding yours. And you got hugged by that young family who needed you as much as you needed them.”

Mom’s new Christmas was a gift to me—easing my concern about her being alone.
The 19th century American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote, “Love gives itself; it is not bought.” (Instant Quotation Dictionary, Career Institute, Inc., Mundelein, IL).

AUDREY CARLI is a freelance writer from Michigan.