Angels We Have Heard on High

Oy, I miss my mom at Christmas. I've been able to keep busy and kind of slide through Christmas this year, and since no one in NC really knows my story, no one has asked much about my family Christmas plans. We haven't unpacked our stuff in the NC house since we won't be there very long, so of course we didn't decorate at all. And I'm doing Minimalist Christmas as far as gifts go, so I've managed to avoid any Big Shopping Trips all together so far.

I can be as casual and low-key as I want about gifts and tinsel, but I cannot escape the Christmas music. And really, I don't want to. But I have to be sure to keep a pack of Kleenex in all my bags and coat pockets.

Les went home to Chicago last week, and AugDog and I will leave tomorrow morning to reunite with him, so I went to try a new church by myself on Sunday. It was a "contemporary" church. You know, the ones with light effects and a Praise Band that made you feel like you were a rock concert-goer more than a worshipper. Which generally makes me CRAZY, but on this particular Sunday, I was thankful for the chance to literally yell Christmas carols at the top of my lungs, and raise my arms, and cry, and have no one think that any of those things were at all strange. Lots of people around me were doing the exact same thing. I blended right in. Maybe they were moved by a joyful Spirit, maybe they were hurting like I was. But shouting O Come, O Come Emmanuel! and really meaning it was a huge relief to the heaviness of my heart. I could take a stab at the alto part with impunity. I could be singing in Klingon and no one would have been able to hear my voice, not even my row-mates. The thunderous band and (excellent, soulful, and LOUD) singers drowned out we mere parishioners by several decibels. I sang and I cried and I wondered if Mom gets to sing and sing and sing all day long. That sounds like what Heaven would be like for her. An all-day sing-a-thon of praise. With some show tunes and The Carpenters and Barbara Streisand thrown in.

When I miss my mom, I miss her singing and her hugs and her cooking and the smell of the house at Christmas time. Those little wax-melting pots full of apple cinnamon-pink goo filling the house with the idea of baking and soft sweaters. I miss the spritz cookies and the heavily-laden Christmas stockings tacked up to the great rough-hewn mantle. She had quilted a stocking for each of us, with our names embroidered at the top. She filled them so full of sweets and socks and lip balm and bath products and magazines and calendars that the fabric strained at the tack-point.

Mom's stockings were the highlight of Christmas morning. She added "stocking stuffers" to a pile all year round, whenever she saw something small and fun that she thought we would like. They were always a joyful surprise - nothing that we asked for, each thing a happy, mom-like choice. Like a bright orange plastic tooth-paste-tube-squeezer that I absolutely ADORE. Honestly. It is one of my favorite gifts ever. And why did she buy it for me? Because she knew that center-squeezed tooth paste tubes are one of my few but intense household pet peeves. No matter how many times we gently reminded her that we still had last year's LifeSaver Gift Sets melting in a drawer, we always got a new one every year in our stocking. When I see the sets in their little pretend storybook boxes, I think of mom.

And when I hear Christmas songs - the real ones, not the silly Fa-la-la-la-la junk - I hear mom singing them. I don't care if the radio is playing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Mariah Carey. I only hear mom's rolling alto.

I don't actually know what "happens" to people when they die. I have theories, which are informed by the Bible and by theology, but I realize that until we go ourselves, we just don't know. At Christmas time, though, I tend to imagine that Mom is in a white choir robe holding a songbook and singing in a Choir of Angels. Because that would be Heaven for her.