My favorite Christmas wasn’t the one when I got the Tiny Tears or the Chatty Cathy, or even the Barbie Dream Kitchen. It wasn’t the time we visited cousins in Iowa and I saw snow for the first time. It was my father’s last Christmas.
We didn’t know at the time, or at least would not admit to ourselves, that it was his last, even though he had been noticeably fading. We intended to celebrate a White Christmas in Illinois with our nuclear family. Dad’s philosophy was “The successful family is a self-destructive unit,” and he would not hear of us spending Christmas in Texas, or flying him up to Springfield. Three of our four children were coming home for the holidays. We were all going to sing with our church choir at the midnight Christmas Eve service. I ordered a huge prime rib roast through the internet and we were looking forward to quite a feast on Christmas Day. My husband and would visit my father in January, on Martin Luther King weekend. But when Dad was hospitalized, our plans suddenly changed.
Sarah and Greg arrived, and the last “chick” to be gathered was, Nick, who flew into Bloomington from Atlanta late on December 23, in a snow storm. We set out for Texas the next morning and drove straight through, in a two-car caravan, frozen roast, dogs and all, stopping only for gasoline and the awful road trip food that one finds at truck stops. We arrived in Wharton and midnight on Christmas Eve and drove straight to the hospital. I knew his room number, so I ran inside to check on him while the others waited in the car.
He was not in the room. There was no sign of him. The bed was neatly made and the room recently cleaned with a fresh set of amenities on the bedside table. We were too late. I was desolate. I sat on the chair in the room and sobbed. Until a nurse came into the room and told me that he had been transferred back to Hearthstone, his assisted living facility. It was a reprieve.
Dad (Papa, Grandpa, Dr. Woodson, or Woody to anyone else who loved him) had been a GP in Wharton, Texas for his whole career, and after retirement wrote a “Health Tips” column for the local paper. His columns also told tales of caring for patients in a rural practice and recollections of his childhood in East Texas. The columns were ultimately published as a book to benefit local charity.
On that Christmas Day, my brother and sister and I and our families and friends gathered at the homestead. Dad was not well, but on the mend, up to staggered visits from all his children and grandchildren throughout Christmas Day. We put two of those new-fangled digital picture frames by his bedside and loaded them up with favorite family photos. He stayed at Hearthstone on Christmas Night, while we, his family and friends, had a wondrous feast in his honor—the prime rib we had brought with us, a luscious beef tenderloin prepared by my brother, and multiple side dishes and desserts. When we were all stuffed with food, my wonderful friend, Janet, had a great idea. Janet (who would show up on the doorstep a month later, bearing a bag of kolaches and a jug of orange juice, the morning after Dad passed away) said, “We should all go and visit Woody.”
We invaded the assisted living facility, occupying the lobby because there were too many of us to fit into his room. He held court, beaming, while we all sang Christmas Carols. There was no other scheduled event at Hearthstone that evening and many other residents came out to join us. We have a custom, almost a ritual, of “hat” pictures at the Woodson home: everyone at the party selects a hat from an eclectic collection of toppers and we all pose for a group picture. The hats were transported to Hearthstone that night, and the tradition was honored.
It was one of those magical evenings when we all felt connected to something wonderful and eternal.
Dad has compared the end of life to the bonfires of his childhood that would flicker and flare up and intermittently before fading away. That Christmas night, we were treated to a major sparkle of his soul before he sailed away from us. He wouldn’t say Goodbye. He just said, “See ya.’
