Christmas Promises

Nana died before Christmas came that year.  Everyone said I took it well.  They talked to me about death; how it’s a part of life and how good I had been to Nana and how God needed her to care for little children in heaven as she had cared for all of us, and how it was OK to miss her and it was OK to cry, and I listened and nodded but their words made no sense to me because none of it was real.  Until I broke the angel’s wing.

Christmas was over and I was wrapping it gently in extra folds of tissue paper when my brother threw his new football at me, shouting “Catch!”  A second too late the way he always did, and it hit my arm and the angel fell in slow motion down onto the kitchen floor where her wing broke away from her china white gown and shattered into pieces.

I knelt down next to her and cried.  Loud, aching sobs that had built up inside came tumbling out as I realized for the first time how real death is, and how final, and how wrong, and that Nana, my best and often only friend in the whole wide world was gone forever.

Everyone made a big fuss over me after that and sent all sorts of cards and gifts trying, I guessed, to fill the giant space in my heart that Nana had left empty.  And as time passed the pain eased, but sometimes all it took was a whiff of her perfume or the sight of an old white head in a church pew and I would feel a tug on my heart that wouldn’t stop aching.

I forgot about the angel until the next Christmas when the box came down with the other decorations.  As I slowly unwrapped the tissue I began to imagine that if the angel was healed I would be too.  I thought maybe all those tugs on my heart had been Nana sewing it back together up in heaven, just as she had mended my clothes, she was mending my heart with memories and signs; not signs of sorrow but of hope.