Some time ago I received a Christmas card today from a lady I hadn’t seen in years. She used to be a familiar face during my tenure in New York City. She was always at church. Never missed a Sunday. Third row. Middle section. She and several other friends all sat together and would greet me with an orchestrated group wave every time I mounted the stairs into the chancel. All of them at the same time. It was like a seated routine from Rockettes of years gone by. I looked for it week by week.
Her card reminded me of those days and of how I hadn’t seen her in such a long time. I did hear from her on occasion (occasions like the Christmas season, for example). The lady left NYC before we did and moved into a retirement community in New Jersey. She did that to be near her family, but eventually had outlived them.
I remember that card. In fact, I kept it so as never to forget the lesson it taught. My friend had hand-written a long note inside saying that her closest friend had moved to Florida. As mentioned previously, her family was also gone. She informed me that she wasn’t able to walk well anymore, just a few steps here and there (and only with a walker). So, she said, she couldn’t get out like she once did. No December shopping. The joys of doing that were seeing the brightly decorated stores, people-watching, and finding that perfect something for someone she loved. Those days, she said, were gone. Even more disappointing was the fact that she could no longer make it to church services. She and her friends on the third pew loved to sing the carols. Her eyes would mist over when a family would light the Advent wreath and a little child would say a prayer. In the card I kept, she had written, “I’m just enjoying a quiet Christmas with my cat.”
Most of what she wrote in her card was not about her at all. It was, instead, about Page and me … and her love for us … and how she hopes we will have the healthiest, happiest holiday season ever. She talked about how much I meant to her when she went through various illnesses and surgeries and I would phone to assure her of my prayers. That really doesn’t seem like much, but apparently to her it was. It mattered to her that every Sunday I would look for her and her friends when the worship service was beginning. Funny, but I thought that moment and their orchestrated wave was a kindness they were extending to me, not vice versa. She didn’t complain of her loneliness. She just noted that her best friend had moved, that she was immobile, and that the season she loved so deeply and dearly would be spent inside with her cat. It wasn’t hard to read between those lines.
Who in your orbit is spending this holiday season alone, for whatever reason? “Joy to the World” is something that lonely people too often feel is reserved for others, but not for themselves. I remember how in my friend’s card she said she hoped Page and I would enjoy the beauty of the holidays “with your family.” Sweet words, but also poignant ones coming from someone with no family left. So, I reiterate: Who do you know who is alone at Christmas? And, how could contact from you help shatter that loneliness and bring some unexpected joy to their world? She wrote that she was no longer mobile. I didn’t know that. I guess I would have known had I been in touch since the previous December. Her card is sitting on my desk as I type this blog. Underneath it is a letter from another friend – similar story, different retirement community. Today, I’m writing each of them a letter. A long one. Whether or not it brings joy to their world, I can already sense it doing so to mine.