My First Christmas Without

By Anne Foley Rauth |

My mom met Jesus January 31.  The next December, I was selfish and wanted her to jet back down from heaven, come to earth and help me plan Christmas like she always had.  I had survived Valentine’s Day without her, then Easter, followed by Mother’s Day, my birthday and Thanksgiving.

But I really wanted her with me for Christmas.

I felt numb.  Throughout my life, my mom may not have always spent thousands of dollars on Christmas gifts, but she always somehow managed to find the most thoughtful and special gifts, that were chosen especially for the receiver.  Although we made a wish list of items we’d like, (you know those impractical things like a new hot pink leather coat), she would also search at garage and estate sales and find us just the right little inexpensive treasures.

Even as a married adult, my mom knew I loved jewelry and other impractical items.  One year, I received a little velvet blue jewelry box from her.  (Her favorite color was blue.)   Inside was an adorable pink (my favorite color) and “diamond” bracelet with the handwritten note, “You deserve a real bracelet like this.”  I kept that bracelet and note in that same little box and even today, wear it on special occasions.

This Christmas, however, I knew I would not receive one of those little treasures from her and it felt like it was the “Christmas without”.

It was hard to muster up the Christmas spirit to do the normal things that our three sons always looked forward to each Christmas.  They still wanted to see Santa, write him letters, participate in their schools’ Christmas program, and make their wish lists.  I went through the motions the best I could but deep down, I was sad my mother wasn’t there to see them in their adorable matching outfits.

It was a week before Christmas, and since the boys were still in school, I decided to take some vacation days to get some Christmas gifts and to decorate around the house.  Perhaps that would finally get me in the Christmas spirit.

Until the snow started to fall and we got a snow day!  An- honest- to-goodness, the roads are not drive able, great snow for sledding snow day.  Unfortunately, not a great day to go out and shop.

As my mom had been a teacher, snow days were pretty special.  As a teacher’s kid, our household was one of the first early in the morning to get the telephone call that there was no school.  One tradition that we had was to put out old breadcrumbs on our porch ledge to feed the birds when it snowed.  We always seemed to attract many birds:  sparrows, blue jays, and the prized red cardinals.  My mom was especially fond of the cardinals.

In that spirit, before the boys were up (I’d let them sleep in when I read the snow day news), I decided to go out to our back yard and fill up our bird feeder for the birds.   I never seemed to attract any “fancy” birds, like red cardinals or blue jays, but it was still fun to see the sparrows around our feeder.

I walked down the deck steps to our bird feeder and stopped and looked all around.  Truly, when snow falls, it makes everything look magical.  The snowflakes were glistening, and then I saw it; I had never seen this before in the lone evergreen tree in our tiny urban yard.

A red cardinal.

I stopped dead in my tracks, I looked up at heaven and said, “Mom, thank you!”  I knew that God and my mom decided to surprise me on that snow day.  One tiny bird changed my “Christmas without” to a Christmas filled with wonder.

And, most every time I see that lone evergreen tree, I am reminded of God’s goodness, faithfulness and his kindness to me on a snowy December day.