Through the years, we all will be together
Christmas Eve re-release: remembering my friend this holiday
This story was originally posted last year on Christmas Eve. I remember the world’s grief feeling heavy and resonant when I published this last year, and I feel it again as we prepare for the end of another year.
So, just as last year, this essay is dedicated to the people we are grieving for, and grieving with, this holiday season.
May their memories be a blessing to us all.
It’s Christmas Eve, 2022, and Charles and I are running late.
We nearly always are, because I nearly always underestimate how long it will take me to help him in and out of the brown wheelchair van. The one that is new enough to where I still feel like I’m driving a bus, when I step up into the footwell. The one a core member from DC dubbed, “The Flying Turd.” The one that blocks our entire street while we’re getting in and out, inciting a screaming match between a neighbor and a driver that kept honking at us. (“They’re going as fast as they can! Quit honking!” Charles concurred, yelling “Yeah! Quit honking!” a cool 6 inches from my ear.)
The one we adore, at least in theory, because it means that Charles won’t get stuck waiting for a cab for three hours outside his church anymore.
(The Sunday where this happened, I considered walking Charles the 1.5 miles home, but nixed the idea when I realized we’d be going down a steep hill. He’s 6’4”, 240 pounds, linebacker build, in a transport wheelchair. I am…not those things. So we waited.)
The main reason we’re late is me, though. I lost track of time wrapping gifts, so by the time I roll up to 6th Street (“You park like you’re on the lam,” I’ve been told) Charles and our friend, Meredith, are already getting into the van. “You’re late, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!” he chastises, but then he pulls me into a big hug that I contort myself to meet. I jump into the passenger seat, and we head to mass.
It’s packed. Meredith bravely goes to find a parking spot while I push and pull and tug and swear Charles’s way out of the van and into the side door of the church. We take basically the only spot, in the front row, right by where the choir and instruments are. Squeezed in tight. It suits him just fine, since he sings in the choir.
(Does he attend choir practice? No. Did he audition? No. But does he sing in the choir? You bet he does.)
I spot familiar faces in the crowd. Maggie and John, who got married at this church just a few weeks ago. F, E, H, and Gabby, from our other L’Arche house in Virginia. Gabby comes up to me a few minutes into Charles, Meredith, and me belting out “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Asks if we can keep an eye on our friends, so she can run home and get her inhaler. She doesn’t usually have asthma attacks, but I learn later that F had disappeared just before the start of the service. She ran, panicking, all around the outside of the church, up and down the aisles, before finding him perfectly content, sitting with Maggie and John.
Chaos continues to reign. It’s the 5 pm service, which my family back home calls “the barnyard service.” The one with the kid’s choir, kids ringing handbells, kids running up and down the aisles, kids screaming. As my little brother got older, we graduated to the grown-up, candlelight, 9 pm service, the one I ached for so acutely during my first Christmas away from home in 2020. The year that I banned basically any carol that referenced being away from loved ones, switching off the radio when “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Blue Christmas,” or, Heaven forbid, “River” came on. I spent that Christmas with L’Arche; we cooked a huge meal and watched The Polar Express. Gave each other presents. It was beautiful.
I still miss home, but it’s hard to have time to think anything when they start communion and it becomes wildly apparent that we are blocking the walkway that the whole left side of the church will take to go back to their seats. Pulling and pushing and toe-crunching and whispered instructions ensue, accompanied by “Silent Night,” until we’ve finagled Charles sufficiently away from the aisle and Meredith and I have squeezed both our butts onto the one remaining chair. “Glories stream from heaven afar…heavenly hosts sing, alleluia…” I can hear Meredith, and Charles, and the whole congregation. Singing.
Church ends, Gabby having made a triumphant return, airways much less constricted. I greet F, H, and E with big hugs, then set about getting Charles back into our Flying Turd. The fun thing about our particular van is that the ramp is exactly the width of Charles’s wheelchair, so if you line it up in any way other than perfectly straight, you will find yourself with one wheel hanging off, a cool 12 inches off the ground, and you will unceremoniously heave Charles into the van as he patiently reminds you to watch it, next time. Then you do this fun 16-point turn to maneuver him from sideways, facing the window, to straight, facing the front of the car. Then you twist yourself around to secure the four points onto each of the four corners of his wheelchair, and pull his seatbelt around him. It’s usually too tight.
Today, Charles reminds me of our grand scheme in between my attempts at loosening it. He still has gifts to get his brothers and a few friends, and he wants to buy them wine. Also, scratch offs. We look it up, and the ABC store two doors down from our favorite Irish pub is open. (“Sound good, Charles?” “Oh, sure!”) So Meredith, bless her heart, ferries us there.
We dismount, unload, Meredith minding double-parked turd, and we find the store bustling and warm. We fight our way through the doorway and then down the aisles, knocking down displays left and right. I apologize, the employees are kind, and laugh it off. Charles picks out no less than 6 bottles of wine. “I’ve got a lot of people to give it to,” he explains. He then shows me how to use the scratch-off machine, since I’ve never done it before. We knock over several more things on our way to check out. Charles pulls out his massive billfold, stuffed with gift cards, receipts, and membership cards to every democratic fundraising entity and animal rights organization in the United States, to foot the $80 bill.
Then: the business of exiting the store. I couldn’t tell you why it is so much harder coming out than coming in. I only know that before I know it, Charles is well and truly stuck in the doorway.
I spend a minute thinking about how I would explain this, if I called our L’Arche emergency line. “We’re stuck in the doorway of the liquor store at 8 pm on Christmas Eve.” Then I realize that I have the emergency line phone in my pocket; I am who I would call for help. Then I realize that the emergency line wouldn’t be able to help at all, actually.
The lovely shopkeeper is trying to open up the second of the double-doors, the one that stays locked, looking around for a key. No less than six complete strangers jump into action, joking and laughing with Charles as they join me in pulling and pushing and pinching their fingers. We all are suddenly part of a group project, and we are all suddenly friends.
And would you believe it? Charles got out the door, by the grace of a very human and humorous God. We wished our friends a Merry Christmas and heave our way back into the van. Heave our way out of it when we got home, chilling as many of the bottles of wine we could fit in the fridge. Charles and I do his medications and get ready for bed, heaving and joking and singing and laughing.
I leave at 9:30 to go sleep in my own bed, in my quiet apartment. He gives me a huge, soft-pajamas, detergent-and-toothpaste-smelling hug.
“Merry Christmas, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
“Merry Christmas, Charles.”
And when I see him the next morning, it’s Christmas Day.
It’s Christmas Eve, 2023, and I miss my friend, Charles.
He used to miss his family a lot this time of year. His sister, his mom, his grandparents. I miss mine, too, even though I’ll see them really soon. He, I hope, is with his family right now. Singing carols. Drinking wine.
Tonight, my friends and I will help one another get to church, and we will sing carols. We’ve been singing them for months now, around the table by the light of our prayer candle. Maybe we’ll drink wine. We will be together, except, one of us will be missing.
Only, when the choir starts singing in the familiar barnyard service, I wouldn’t be surprised if Charles's voice echoes into the rafters. If he shows up in our Christmas dinner, or in our interactions with strangers-turned-friends, or our dark rides in the car, lit up by Christmas lights. Or maybe in the quiet moments where we wish each other goodnight, knowing that the next time we see one another, it’ll be Christmas Day.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the season brought us all a little closer together, even grieving. Even now.
Wishing you a very gay Yuletide, tidings of comfort and joy, and above all: peace on earth, goodwill to every one of us.
With love,
Liddy
I not only liked it, I loved it! It was a joy to read again.
Have a high holy holiday time!
Xo
Shannon