A Special Christmas
Emory Donovan carried the cardboard cartons of Christmas decorations down from his attic and cut the packing tape to open each of the dust-covered boxes. He took out the bright red metal stand and put the artificial tree in its center, tightening the three screws until the trunk was secured. Then he removed the branches from the box, separated them by length and inserted them into the proper sockets in the trunk. For an artificial tree, it was a nice one; it almost looked like a real Douglas fir.
From another carton, Emory removed the lights, tested them and deftly strung them through the branches. Over the years he had gotten quite skilled at stringing the lights. Of course, in the fifty Christmases he and Marjorie had celebrated in this house, there were many different types and styles. There were the thick, heavy sets that used four-watt bulbs similar to those found in nightlights. Few people use those bulky sets on their trees anymore. The miniature lights proved to be much safer, causing fewer tree fires. They also came in a variety of shapes: icicles, poinsettias and snowflakes, to name just a few. The newest sets, run by microchips, had variable speed flashing lights, and some were even musical. This year, however, Emory would use his favorite sets of lights, ones Marjorie bought on the Home Shopping Network three years earlier.
"Aren't they beautiful?" she had asked when she plugged them in. "They're just like the ones my parents put on the tree when I was a little girl."
Emory had looked skeptically at the sets of bubble lights, while he and Marjorie waited for them to heat up. Surprisingly, every one of them bubbled. He smiled to see that this year, too, all the bubble lights were working properly.
After the lights were up, he carefully removed the ornaments from their boxes. There was an assortment of both older family keepsakes and newer sets purchased at after-Christmas sales at Target and Walmart. Some were made of glass, others of unbreakable plastic. The Donovan family Christmas tree was not like those seen in department store windows and Christmas shops. There was no central theme, no particular color scheme. However, when the decorating was done and the strands of tinsel were added, the overall effect was warm and cheery.
At first, Emory found hanging the delicate balls and bells from their wire hangers a little awkward. This had always been Marjorie's job when she was alive. Now, there was no one but the widower to assume the task, which he completed admirably, breaking only one ornament in the process. Finally, he opened several packs of shiny silver icicles and applied a small handful to each branch. Once he ran out of tinsel, Emory stood back and admired his handiwork.
Decorating the tree had always been one of Marjorie's favorite holiday activities, and she always insisted on waiting until Christmas Eve, despite the objections of the children. The night before Christmas was very special in the Donovan household. There was always a delicious home-cooked dinner, a Yule log burning in the fireplace and Christmas carols playing on the stereo. After the tree was up and the children were in bed asleep, Marjorie and Emory would bring wrapped presents down from the attic and place them beneath the tree, so the children would find them there when they woke early the following morning.
Emory could remember a time when his home was so cluttered with toys and sporting equipment that he had seriously thought of selling it and moving to a larger place. In retrospect, he was glad he didn't. The bicycles, skateboards, doll carriages and drum sets were long gone now. So, too, were his wife's sewing machine and exercise bike. He gazed through the window at the for-sale sign on his lawn. This would be his last Christmas in the house. He felt a tear slide down his cheek and quickly brushed it away.
"We won't have any of that!" he told himself firmly.
He walked over to the stereo, turned off the radio that was playing twenty-four hours of commercial-free holiday music and put on a Mitch Miller Christmas record. "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" echoed through the empty rooms of the old house.
The widower gathered the empty boxes and returned them to the attic. Afterward, he passed the door to the bedroom he and Marjorie had shared for fifty years. Being in a nostalgic mood, he opened the closet where all her clothes were still hanging, took out her red velour bathrobe and gently rubbed the soft fabric against his cheek. His wife had been dead since February, more than ten months, and he still expected to hear her voice calling him to dinner or asking him when he would be done in the bathroom.
Reminding himself that there was still much to do, he walked out of the bedroom, closing the door to those memories. He returned to the living room where the Mitch Miller record had come to an end, so Emory replaced it with one by Mario Lanza. Then he walked into the kitchen and began preparing his dinner.
Marjorie—God bless her—had always made a special dinner on Christmas Eve, even though the family sat down to a turkey feast the following day. This year, however, Emory's Christmas Eve dinner would be a simple one. The main course and side dishes came from the local Boston Market, the dessert from a neighborhood bakery and the eggnog was made by Turkey Hill.
As he reheated his fast-food dinner in the microwave, he lit the candles and set his place at the dining room table with Marjorie's Spode Christmas tree dinnerware and her Oneida silverware. He took out the half-gallon of eggnog and poured it into a glass decorated with holly, one of the many his wife had gotten at Arby's Restaurant over the years. The bell on the microwave sounded, and Emory spooned his food onto the plate.
As he did, he said laughingly, "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings."
He, Marjorie and their two children had always enjoyed watching the timeless holiday classics. Every December they tuned into It's a Wonderful Life, Holiday Inn, White Christmas and several versions of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, including their favorite one starring Alistair Simms as Ebenezer Scrooge. There were also the annual specials such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus is Coming to Town and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Emory threw the plastic containers into the trashcan and sat down to eat his meal. He lifted his glass of eggnog and toasted the empty chair across from him, the place at which Marjorie had sat for fifty years.
"Merry Christmas, and God bless us, everyone," he said, taking a sip of the creamy beverage.
Despite the longing he felt for his family, the old man enjoyed his Christmas Eve dinner. For a take-out meal, it was actually quite good. As he scraped the plate, he wished he had ordered a double helping of the streusel and marshmallow-topped mashed sweet potatoes.
The Mario Lanza record was coming to an end, so Emory blew out the candles, got up from the table and returned to the living room. He threw a stack of kindling and a few logs into the fireplace and lit them. In no time at all, the fire was blazing. The widower turned off the living room lamp, preferring to let the tree lights and fireplace be the only illumination.
Suddenly, he felt tired, even though it was not quite seven o'clock yet. He sat back in his recliner, reached for the TV remote and scanned the channels, rejecting the televised religious services, A Christmas Story and a special holiday edition of Deal or No Deal. HBO, Cinemax and Showtime were each showing a movie he had already seen. Emory worked his way through the higher numbers on the cable converter box and stopped at the Travel Channel, which was televising scenes of Christmas across America.
As he watched a segment on holiday celebration in Newport, Rhode Island—marveling at the elaborate decorations in the historic mansions—he again looked at his own decorated tree. It was beautiful, but something was missing. There were no colorfully wrapped presents underneath it, waiting to be opened the following morning.
Emory wanted his last Christmas in this house to be special. But now he knew that despite the tree and the ornaments, the Christmas carols playing on the stereo, the Boston Market turkey dinner, the eggnog and the traditional programs on television, the holiday for him held nothing but emptiness, sorrow and a deep sense of loss. There were no wife and kids to share it with him. Marjorie died of breast cancer, his son, Dennis, died in a car accident at the age of eighteen and his daughter, Heather, died of a drug overdose when she was twenty-two. While he had reached the ripe old age of seventy-eight and was in excellent health, what good did it do him? He was all alone. With a heavy heart, Emory Donovan turned off the Christmas tree lights and went up to bed.
* * *
"Good morning, Mr. Donovan," the pretty young nurse cheerfully greeted him when Emory walked into the clinic the day after Christmas. "The doctor will be with you soon. Won't you have a seat in the waiting room?"
Emory sat down next to a young man, who appeared to be about thirty years old.
"You're not a patient here, are you?" Emory asked.
"Yes, I am," the young man replied.
"I thought Dr. Newkirk's practice was limited to the elderly like me."
"Usually it is, but he does make exceptions from time to time."
Emory picked up a magazine but he could not find an article that interested him. The young man who sat next to him put down his newspaper and smiled encouragingly at Emory.
"Are you nervous?"
"A little," Emory confessed. "What about you?"
"Not a bit. In fact, I'm fascinated by the entire concept. Several years ago, my father suffered from the same disease I have. You wouldn't believe what those doctors put him through! Countless medications, a string of operations, transplants—you name it. By the time the disease finally killed him, he had more artificial organs than he did real ones."
The man laughed but then winced with pain. Perspiration beaded up on his brow, and he took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.
He must be in agony, Emory thought with pity.
"I'm lucky, I guess," he said. "I've never been seriously ill a day in my life."
The young man looked at him questioningly.
"Then why are you here?"
"Not all pain is of a physical nature," Emory replied.
"That's true," the young man agreed. "I guess you've had your share of hard times."
"You might say that. There were a lot of good ones, too, though. I was once happily married and had two wonderful children. Oh, those were great days, and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. But then when my son was a freshman in college, a drunk driver ran into him head-on. Dennis died instantly. We all took it pretty hard, especially my daughter. My wife and I were so wrapped up in our own sorrow, that we didn't see how deeply depressed Heather was becoming. Within a year of losing her brother, my daughter swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills."
"I'm sorry," the young man said with compassion.
"If it weren't for Marjorie, I don't think I could have held on."
"Is Marjorie your wife?"
"Was my wife. She passed away earlier this year."
"Mr. Donovan?" the nurse called as she entered the waiting room. "The doctor will see you now."
Emory said goodbye to the young man and wished him luck. Then he followed the nurse into the treatment room, which was empty except for a reclining chair and a metal cabinet that held the tools of Dr. Newkirk's trade.
"Just make yourself comfortable, Mr. Donovan," the young woman told him.
As Emory reclined in the chair, adjusting his feet and neck for maximum comfort, the nurse walked over to a touch-screen computer monitor and opened up a series of menus.
"What's your preference?" she asked. "A green meadow? The ocean? The mountains?"
"The ocean will be fine. My wife and I always loved to go to Cape Cod and walk on the beach."
"How about some music? Or would you just like the sound of the waves?"
"The waves, I think."
The nurse selected several options from the menus; and the wall opposite the patient's chair, which was actually a floor-to-ceiling, three-dimensional plasma screen, came alive with the sight of ocean waves breaking on a sandy beach. A Dolby sound system broadcast the sounds of the surf and the crying of seagulls. As a final touch, the harsh fluorescent overhead lights were dimmed. The entire atmosphere was peaceful and relaxing.
With no further word, the nurse let herself out of the room. After a few minutes, Emory heard the door open and close again.
"Are you ready, Mr. Donovan?" the doctor asked gently. "There's still time if you want to change your mind."
"No, I'm quite ready."
Dr. Newkirk walked over to the metal cabinet, unlocked the top drawer and removed a hypodermic needle and a small vial of medication. As the doctor filled the needle, Emory began to feel a bit unsettled.
"This is a wonderful clinic you have here, Dr. Newkirk."
"Thank you, Mr. Donovan."
"If you don't mind my asking, what made you get into this particular line of work?" he asked anxiously.
Dr. Newkirk smiled compassionately at the old man. Many patients became nervous at this juncture. The doctor knew that if he spoke to him in a calm, soothing voice, the uneasiness would soon pass.
"My great-grandfather was a doctor, a brilliant medical researcher. Like many of his contemporaries, he was dedicated to saving and prolonging human life. That was in the days when—regardless of the prognosis—if patients showed any signs of life, they were hooked up to life support systems. Do you know there were special facilities filled with men, women and children kept alive by machines and fed intravenously through tubes? Some showed no signs of brain activity, and few of them could breathe on their own."
"Seems a bit of a waste to keep people alive when they're not even aware of what's going on around them," Emory said.
"Especially when you take into consideration the number of people back then who were being kept alive by improved medical techniques, transplants, and artificial hearts, lungs and kidneys. The world population was reaching an alarming number. Disease may have been under control, but poverty and hunger were rampant."
"I remember learning about those days when I was in school. They must have been frightening indeed."
"I would imagine so," Dr. Newkirk agreed. "People kept having babies, but there were few deaths to offset the increase in population. There were no wars to speak of, capital punishment was abolished, suicide was illegal and most countries had laws that prohibited the removal of patients from life support."
"That's when the U.N. stepped in, wasn't it?" Emory asked as Dr. Newkirk swabbed his arm with a cotton ball.
"Yes. The doctors were ordered to go in and pull the plugs. Violent criminals were executed. And clinics like this," the doctor said, indicating his treatment room, "were established."
"And I guess they've been a blessing all around," Emory said, as he relaxed in the chair, waiting for the doctor to administer the shot.
"Yes, Mr. Donovan, many a grateful patient has found mercy here."
Emory Donovan felt a sharp prick in his arm, followed by a slight burning sensation. But these small irritations passed quickly—much quicker than the long, lonely years ahead of him would have passed.
"Thank you, Doctor," he said sleepily, and then he stared ahead at the rolling waves breaking on the sandy beach.
Emory briefly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he was joined by the young man he had met in Dr. Newkirk's waiting room. The man, free at last from the pain of his terrible disease, bade Emory a joyful farewell and ran off along the beach toward a group of people who were eagerly waiting to welcome him. For a moment Emory was left alone again, but then a familiar voice spoke his name.
"Marjorie," he said, as he embraced his beloved wife.
"Dad," two voices called in unison.
It had been many years since he had last seen Dennis and Heather, but there was no mistaking his two children.
"Oh, Emory, what took you so long?" his wife asked.
"I would have been here sooner, darling," he explained joyfully, "but I'm afraid there are always long waiting lists at the Saint Kevorkian Euthanasia Clinics."
Salem and I would like to remind everyone that there are homeless animals who could use a loving family not just on Christmas but every day of the year.
above image © actioncat.com
