Yesterday was a difficult day in the most difficult time of the year.
Yesterday I stood in front of a world-gone-brilliantly-white beautifully decorated Christmas Tree, one of 26 on display at the Mary Bridge Children’s Festival of Trees.
And as I stood there, I was still trying to hide my emotions.
Moments before the song “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was playing and that’s when the tears began. For the first time in a half-century that won’t be true for me as I lost my wife to cancer the first day of spring of this year.
But now the tears had returned as I read the dedication, and the inspiration, for this tree.
Next to the tree there was a framed dress of Snow White, one that a little princess once wore, who may have in costume once-and-again twirled about pretending, wishing, hoping that one day a prince would come and whisk her away to live a life happily ever after.
For this little princess, who once wore this dress, who provided the inspiration for this tree, that dream won’t be realized.
Nor will it be for our family this year who, in addition to my wife, likewise lost a little princess.
And it was that memory, yesterday, which caused the tears to spill yet again.
This heartbreak is so life-shattering for so, so many this time of year, these comments of a reader to what I wrote being so poignantly heart-wrenching:
“What do you do with all the things that your child made for you while growing up? The handprint ornaments? The little paper wreaths? The snowmen? The Baby Jesus in a manger? When your almost-grown child passes away, and you no longer have the energy or the desire to decorate a tree, or decorate the mantle, or the door, with all the things that have so much meaning to you…?”
What do we do?
We weep with those who weep. That’s what we do.
And hopefully, somehow, in some way, in coming alongside, we inspire them to become, themselves, an inspiration, a blessing to others.
That’s what we do.
