When the Tree came down in January, all the ornaments with names on them were gathered and arranged on giant tables in the mall. Most of them were abandoned, but Jeff made a point to go back and get Susan’s. They had taken the kids again, and scoured the tables looking for themselves in miniature. When they couldn’t find it, Jeff began to grow angry that someone might have taken it – until Brian called from over by the glass case that displayed the town’s Collection. Susan and Jeff had been surprised to see their family nestled among the five chosen that year, but to Brian it seemed only natural.
Jeff thought about asking for it back – after all, he wanted it on their tree! But Brian had been so horrified when he said it, that Jeff had backed off. Susan laughed at him. Eventually, Jeff grew thankful he had relented. Every year the four of them went to the ceremony, and every year when the mayor unveiled the Collection, they would point and ooh and aah as their little family took its place of honor three stories high among the uppermost boughs.
They had come and watched the ceremony, just two weeks ago, for the first time since the funeral. Except there had been only three of them.
At that moment, Jeff bitterly wished that he taken back the ornament years ago. Other than her pictures and clothes, it was one of the few things of Susan’s he still had left, and he wanted it for himself and his sons, not to share with the prying eyes of strangers.
But that was two weeks ago. Now, as he and the boys stood quietly on the third floor balcony, he tried again to only remember the good things.
“Do you see it?” he asked, and pointed. Their tiny family hung at the end of a green limb, not 15 feet away.
“I see it!” Davey said as he pressed his face between the iron bars of the railing. Brian, for once, had totally forgotten about his drawing pad, and nodded as he looked at the ornament.
“Remember how Mom used to love this tree? She said that the best was when she would go shopping and she’d be hurrying and in a bad mood and totally forget about it, and then suddenly she would come around a corner, and there it was. Like Christmas just appeared by magic, right in front of her…”
Jeff and the boys stood there for several minutes in silence. The longer they looked at the happy family of four in the ornament, the more the crowds around them seemed to grow quiet and disappear, until the three of them were all alone…except for a fourth person they could no longer see, or touch, or hear, but for whom they would have given up this Christmas and every one after it to have her back, even if just for a moment.
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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.
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