Ghosts of Christmas past teach us why they matter
Like most people, I’ve memorized “A Christmas Carol.” Unlike the Grinch, or Rudolph or Charlie Brown, those wonderful holiday chestnuts that remain constant in our memory as if captured in rich childhood amber, Charles Dickens’ classic has the ability to mutate and adapt itself on second, third, and twentieth readings. A child will look at it as a magical trip with ghosts and strange English foods and Currier and Ives illustrations. A teenager will ignore it altogether and jump directly to the electronic toys left under the tree. A young adult will also ignore it, entranced by the energy of youth and possibility and disinterested in the darker aspects of the tale.
But those of us approaching that woods which, as Robert Frost wrote, are “lovely, dark and deep” with their snow laden boughs and the symbolism of decreasing days look at the story with recognition. At least, I do.
I have not yet crossed the bridge over into oblivion, nor am I even at its foot, but I can see it in the distance. And that’s why “A Christmas Carol” has increased meaning for me, someone who has always rejoiced in marking the holiday by assessing the presents in the “presence” of loved ones.
Now, though, it is the ghosts of Christmas past that seem to be calling to me, a battalion of spirits that once touched me deeply in life, and now touch me infinitely closer in death.
The first ghost is my grandfather, who died on Dec. 11, 1968. Mike Fusco was a trash collector for the city of Philadelphia, a good and simple man who loved his wife, his family, his unfiltered Chesterfields and wrestling at the old “Arena” on Saturday afternoons. He wore flannel shirts and Old Spice, sang “Down in the Valley” as my lullabye, and rubbed my 1-year-old teething-sore gums with whiskey (when no one noticed). I loved him better than any other person I can remember loving with the power of 7-year-old invincibility. But one week to the day after my seventh birthday, he passed away from emphysema, the love of Chesterfields having ripped him from the other loves of his life. At an early age, Christmas had that note of sadness.
Then comes the ghost of my father, who did not die at Christmas but who spent the holiday of 1981 in the hospital being treated for cancer. He was only 42. I had been spending my junior year at Bryn Mawr in Paris, against my own will because I wanted to be home around the family to fight alongside of Daddy. But the “family” knew better, and sent me off so that I wouldn’t sit year-long gentile shiva for a proud and stubborn man. That Christmas of 1981, they lied to me. They said that it was a once-in-alifetime experience for me being in Europe, and that they’d planned for British friends to take me in and treat me to, ironically, a Dickens Christmas. So off I went to Canterbury, and had the most exquisite time of my life with the Muellers, kind people who must have known that this “orphaned” American girl was in need of cheering up. All the while, my father was hooked up to an IV at Jefferson, and I was sitting in pubs and walking through cathedrals and eating whiskeysoaked fruitcakes and crumpets with clotted cream. The ghost of that Christmas is the unselfish heart of my parents, who wanted to give me joy even though I resented them for the separation. It was the last Christmas my father would have, but the gift for me is that I will remember him at all the other Christmases, healthy and smiling, and whole.
Then, my grandmother. Mamie was the most important person in my life after my mother. She represented what grandmothers represent to their loving grandchildren: unconditional acceptance. Actually, “unconditional” in her case did not exclude comments about my hair, my glasses, or my clothing, but these “suggestions” were delivered with love and were therefore accepted with as much grace as I could muster (which means, not much at all). She was Mike’s better half, and when he died in 1968 she willed herself to carry on for 17 more years even though her heart was operating at less than 50 percent. She was simple, and funny, and generous with what little a trash collector’s pension brought her, and purely good. Mamie Fusco is, to this day, my moral polestar. But in 1985, as I was studying for my second year law school exams, that heart that was only halffunctioning gave out. She was 70, and I thought she’d live for a century, so I never considered the possibility of a world without her. On Dec. 12th, one day after her husband, I entered that new reality. This is the ghost that haunts me the most, always at my ear, always reminding me of the contours of home.
This year, and for the past three years, the ghost that is more than anything a reality is my mother. She passed away in August 2014, and so the first Christmas without her passed in a blur, in that anesthetized state we fall into when catastrophe is kind and doesn’t make us fully feel its weight. The next year, last year, was hard, because the tree hadn’t been dressed by her hands, and the cookies were unbaked, and the lights shone more dimly on the bushes outside of our home. We toasted her memory, with the spiked eggnog she loved and which was mixed with the slight salt of tears, straightened our shoulders, and hoped that the next holiday would be lighter on our souls.
This year, the ghost has returned, settling in every corner of our Christmas house. Lucy is traveling with her father, and her mother, and her husband, these spirits of past holidays and past lives that are, if anything, more vital than ever. Their absence makes their value more tangible, because the empty places shaped by their hearts and faces and minds teach us to appreciate what we have when it is still within our reach, the touch of our hands.
Present and future matter, and should be respected. But it is the ghosts of Christmas past who teach us why they matter. Because one day, we will be the ghosts, and our memory will be shaped by the lives we lived, and shared.
Merry Christmas.