Before-bed read

After her mother passed away, Kathy Eliscu was heartbroken— until a Christmas surprise gave her the comfort she so needed

“Later, she told me my facial expression was indescribable,

somewhere between shock and joy, with my mouth open, unable to say

a word”

My mother, a later-in-life humor columnist, died in July 2006 at age 81 after a long illness. My dad, a year older than Mom, was in failing health, requiring much care, and he agreed to move to an assisted living residence. We found a lovely place for him just a few miles from where I was living.

It was up to me to get their condominium emptied and then sold, so we rented a nearby storage unit so we could properly go through everything later when we had more time. It all happened faster than I expected, and before long we had a scheduled move date.

The task was enormous. I was working full-time and raising a teenager, so I enlisted the help of the woman who had helped care for my parents, plus family members—my teenage son and my brother (who lived an hour away). I was grateful when my sister Laurie said she’d come to Maine from New York to help out during the final weekend before the big move.

In the previous few weeks, we’d discovered nearly every drawer, bin and shopping bag in the condominium was filled with all kinds of paperwork. We found dress shop receipts, Playbills from shows they’d seen, hotel notepads, take-out menus from restaurants—and copy after copy of my mom’s columns from a career spanning more than three decades.

During the final “push” weekend we all went to the condo to do what I called a quick-and-dirty sorting, prior to moving everything to storage. I was disappointed that I hadn’t found some kind of a note for us from my mom. I knew she loved us with the strongest of a mother’s love, but it seemed inexplicable that there was no goodbye note. After all, she was a writer!

Yet, we were in a hurry, so what mattered most was getting the job done. So when I glanced over at my sister, I couldn’t help but feel quietly annoyed, seeing her parked next to Mom’s desk, going through one paper at a time, slowly and methodically—a perfectionist trait she’d inherited from our dad. Meanwhile, I was hurriedly packing one thing after another.

My sister seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time on the trivial, even though I had made it clear we had a deadline. But in those early days and weeks of grief, I had often found myself fluctuating between anger and tears, so I tried to let go of my anger for the time being. After all, Laurie had her grief, too, and had traveled a long way to help. She was doing the best she could. We all were.

The move was accomplished, and I spent chunks of time in subsequent weekends going to the storage units for the sorting process. It would be months before this was completed, and I was resigned to it.

As the December holidays approached, I overdid everything. In the sadness of missing my mom, I wore myself out shopping, rushing to holiday and church activities, and shopping some more. I was throwing my grief into purchasing inanimate objects to show my love for family and friends.

On Christmas Eve, I was at home, upstairs, speed-wrapping gifts and feeling anything but Christmassy, when I heard the front doorbell ring.

“Ted!” I shouted to my trusty sweetheart, who was downstairs.

“Can you get that?”

A minute later, he called up to me. “Kath, can you come downstairs, please?” he asked.

“I’m busy! Can’t you take care of it?” I called back.

“I think you should come down,” he said. “There are some carolers at the door.”

By now, I was just plain grumpy. Carolers? Ugh. Setting aside the wrapping paper, ribbons and labels, I went downstairs, through the dining room, and into the kitchen.

“You have to see this,” he said, as I walked through the kitchen and headed to the door.

And singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” were my nieces Christie and Kathy, my nephew Tommy—and my sister Laurie! They had come from New York to surprise me.

“Don’t worry,” called out my sister above the singing. “We have a hotel room, and we brought food!” She laughed, pointing to a large cooler. Later, she told me that my facial expression was indescribable, somewhere between shock and joy, with my

mouth open, unable to say a word.

The bounty they’d brought for Christmas Day was wonderful, including a pre-cooked turkey. And although Mom’s absence was palpable, the presence of my loving family moved me in a way I could not have imagined. The pre-Christmas rush had stopped. I was filled with emotion—the good kind. Anger and angst had given way to what felt like a truer meaning of the holiday.

On Christmas Day, we all had a lovely and lively time with Dad, with laughter, singing, way too much food and family stories. Then we all moved into the living room to open gifts.

“Don’t open these yet,” said my sister, as she passed out small packages to each of us. When we all had them, she let us unwrap them together.

It took a minute to take it in. We each found an exact reproduction of a note, on soft cream-colored paper trimmed with a simple design at the top, each one framed. They were the words from my mom that I had prayed for. In her own handwriting, she had written:

If anything should ever happen to me, I want my children & grandchildren & now great-grandchildren to know how much I love them all.

They have been the joy of my life.

And also—I love & have always loved my husband Larry.

I have a wonderful life.*

Mom, Gaga, Marge

*Even better than “Jimmy Stewart’s! It was a Christmas I would never forget, as I looked again and again at the sweet, flower-outlined paper. It was the note Laurie had found on that day so many months earlier as she’d sat at our mother’s desk…words I’d longed to see and read, now forever belonging to each of us, imprinted in our hearts, a reminder of the love our mother had for us, and of our family’s love for each other. —Kathy Eliscu