Readers share favorite Christmas memories

Mother’s last Christmas was a lesson in the joy of giving

By Dana Van Deuren
Special to The Criterion

My mother loved Christmas—the sights, the sounds, all that it encompasses—and she was an expert at creating the perfect holiday with presents and food for family and friends.

Of all the Christmases she created and we shared, my mind always drifts back to our last Christmas together. Incredibly, it was like all the other perfect holidays except for one detail. My mother was dying of breast cancer.

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 36 when I was 9 years old, and yet—through the next six years that she battled this disease—she still managed to put together a flawless holiday.

And she was always home to celebrate with us. She was in and out of the hospital for many years while fighting her battle with cancer, but she was always home for Christmas.

Every Christmas came with a reminder of the true meaning—a Children’s Living Bible, a beautiful cover for my own Bible, a handwritten note in a beautiful white Bible that my mom had carefully chosen and wrapped for me. She knew and practiced the importance of faith, and Christmas was a joyful celebration of the birth of the Christ Child.

I guess that’s why Christmas remains such a joyful and peaceful celebration in my mind. It was the one time of year that I knew I could count on my mom’s presence and happiness. It was a time of normalcy in our long hours and days. It was a celebration of life led and lived by my mother.

I was only 14 when I celebrated my last Christmas with my mother. We had the usual beautiful Christmas tree, a multitude of presents and holiday traditions. I don’t really remember what I received that year, but I do remember watching my mother’s face light up as she watched us unwrap our gifts. I remember there were more hugs than usual, more time spent sitting and talking around a blazing fire, and more hand-holding.

I now believe that my mother willed herself to live through her last Christmas. What she wanted for us took precedence over her own fears.

Although I had unwrapped numerous signs of her faith throughout the years, I watched my mom become a living example of it that year.

She died one month later.

Although I only had her with me for 14 short years, she taught me a lifetime of lessons: the beauty of a quiet moment around a roaring fire, a hug that never ends, the delight in watching others’ joys and the faith that is not just celebrated at Christmas, but lived every day.

I have spent many Christmases now without my mother, but not one without her memory. I see her face in my little girls’ faces and her spirit in my son, and I thank God that I was given the chance to know Christmas every day that I spent with my mother.

(Dana Van Deuren is a member of St. Pius X Parish in Indianapolis.) †