The Mistletoe Inn (26 page)

The power of Christmas is its capacity to evoke memories. For most, the familiar songs and decorations bring back cherished feelings of Christmas past—fond memories of shared experiences with family and loved ones.

For my father and me, that power was turned against us and Christmas brought out the worst of memories. Crippling memories. Christmas Day 1995 was the day we found my mother dead.

For me 1995 carried its own special horror. It was still morning. I had opened my presents with my father, as my mother was in bed with a migraine.

I still remember what I got that year. Trauma has a way of indelibly linking the incidentals to the profound. I received boxes of Swedish Fish and Lemonheads, some clothes, the album
Pieces of You
by Jewel, and my big present, a Sony Discman CD player.

I had just opened the last of my gifts when my father got up to check on my mother. It seemed that he was gone a long time and I put on my earphones and started listening to “Who Will Save Your Soul” on my new CD player. Even with the music playing I heard him cry out. I ran into the bedroom to find my father on his knees bent over my mother's still body. He was sobbing.

When I got back to the house, my father was in the kitchen making breakfast. Christmas music was playing.

“Good morning,” he said.

“What are we doing today?” I asked.

“We've got cooking to do,” he said. “And, of course, dinner at the Jade Dragon.”

“Of course,” I said. Every Christmas Eve, except during the years I was married to Marcus, my father and I had gone out to dinner for Chinese at the Jade Dragon Restaurant, a Christmas Eve tradition we'd loosely borrowed from our perennial Christmas favorite,
A Christmas Story
—the movie with Ralphie and his Red Ryder BB gun. “I have a little shopping to do.”

“Just take the car,” he said.

I had already purchased my father's Christmas presents; I just wanted to get out, hoping to keep ahead of my panic attacks. I also wanted to scout out some car dealerships. They were open, of course, and there were people inside. As I said, there are always those last-minute Christmas purchases.

If I was trying to outrun my anxiety, I was failing. You can't outrun fog. As the evening fell my anxiety grew worse. My father recognized it, of course. I'm sure he was expecting
it. We went to dinner at six. My father told jokes and funny stories about the VA, but I just grew more somber. We finished our meal and drove home, my father growing increasingly uncomfortable with my moodiness.

As we walked into the house he asked, “What's wrong?”

“You know what's wrong,” I said. “I hate Christmas.”

“I know,” he said. “You always have. At least since . . .”

“Since my mother annihilated it?” I said, saying what he wouldn't.

He paused, and for a moment there was just silence. Then my father said, “Honey, I need to tell you something about your mother.”

“I don't want to talk about her.”

“I know. And for years I've honored your feelings. But this time, you're going to listen to me. Let's go in the family room.”

I was stunned by the gravity of his voice. My father had never before spoken to me this way about my mother. I followed him into the family room and sat down on the couch across from his chair. He took a deep breath and looked at me with a somber expression.

“Kim, it wasn't easy raising you alone, especially after all you went through. But I did my best. I'm sorry I wasn't a better father.”

I looked at him incredulously. “Don't say that. You're the best father I could ever have.”

“I don't know,” he said. “I've always believed in letting you be you and make your own decisions. But sometimes I think that might have been a mistake. There've been times in my life when I've remained silent when I should have spoken
up. Like when you married Marcus. I knew he was rotten. I should have told you no. I don't know if you would have listened to me, but I regret not doing more to stop that.

“But there's one thing that I feel even worse about than Marcus and that's your mother. There's something you need to know about her—something that I don't think you fully understand—and you need to understand. You need to listen to me carefully.” He leaned forward, and even though he looked old and tired, his eyes were strong and clear. “Kim, you need to know that I not only loved your mother, I still do. And knowing what I know now, I would marry her all over again.”

I couldn't believe what he was saying. “Why?”

“I knew your mother at her best. You don't know that side of her, but she was sunshine. She was my one true love. She healed me from the pain of war. She was there in my hardest times. She was there in my nightmares.

“When you were little, you thought your mother's name was Tessa. That's because you heard me call her by my nickname for her, Tesoro. That's Italian for
treasure
. That's what she was to me. My treasure.

“The first years of our marriage were beautiful. She struggled a little with depression, it ran in her family, but she fought it and she always came back.

“It wasn't until after she gave birth to you that she went into the deepest depression I had ever seen in her. It was something chemical. She fought it for years. She did everything every doctor, every counselor, told her to do.

“One time, at a holistic counselor's advice, she went off
all of her medications cold turkey. I sat with her through the night as she went through withdrawal. She sweated out her clothing and shook and wept, but she didn't give up. She did whatever she thought she had to do. Not for herself, but for you and me. But it didn't get better; it got worse. It began to overcome her.

“Depression is a horrible thing. It overtakes a person like a parasite, feeding off their hope and self-esteem until there's nothing left. Mom wasn't trying to run away from you or me, she was trying to run away from the monster that was eating her from the inside out.

“What happened when she took her life was unimaginably painful for you. And for me. But you need to know how hard she fought to be with us. In the end, she lost the battle, but she fought as courageously as anyone I've ever seen.” He looked into my eyes. “Now answer me honestly. If cancer overtook me now, would you think that I had abandoned you?”

I began to cry. “Of course not.”

“No. You wouldn't. And you shouldn't with your mother. People make judgments about suicide and depression based on their own experience, but that's like me describing the surface of Mars. I've never been there. I can only guess what it's like.

“Depression alters the mind's ability to think rationally. Things that would horrify someone in their right mind suddenly seem like a good idea. Like ending their life. They might even believe that they're doing the right thing for those they love.” A tear fell down my father's cheek. “Before
her death, she left a letter. In it, she said that she had finally set me and you free to be happy. She thought it was the right thing.”

I was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “You want me to forgive her?”

To my surprise he shook his head. “Forgiving her won't help her. She's gone. What I want is for you to forgive yourself.”

“Forgive myself for what?”

“One thing I know is that somewhere deep inside, in spite of what we tell ourselves, part of all survivors believe that they could have changed the outcome by doing something different.

“Then we try to ease our pain with anger. But anger isn't strength. It only masks itself as strength. It's weakness. At its core, it's fear. Fear of facing what might be the truth.”

I bowed my head. My mind felt as if it were spinning.

“I should have talked to you about this much, much sooner. But for so many years I didn't understand all this myself. I was struggling with my own paradox. You see, Mom's depression changed after she gave birth to you. If she had never given birth . . .”

I looked up. “You're saying it's my fault?”

“Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “You had no say in the matter. But I did. And I've wondered so many times . . .” He looked down. When he looked back up there were tears in his eyes. “She knew. In her last letter, she wrote, ‘I would do it again for my Kimberly. She is the one beautiful light to
shine from my darkness. Even if I cannot be the mother I want to be, the mother she deserves, I have never regretted my decision to have her.' ”

My father began to openly cry. Then, at that moment, a dam of emotion broke, flooding through my entire being. I began sobbing. My father came over and put his arms around me as my body heaved.

It took me a while to realize what was happening. After all these years I was finally mourning my mother.

My father held me for a long while. After I finally began to calm, he said, “Let's go to bed.” He helped me up and went into the bathroom. He came out holding a warm, wet washcloth, which he handed to me.

“You've been through something traumatic tonight. I want you to not think about it anymore but put this on your face and relax. Your mind needs to rest. An army psychiatrist told me that helps.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Kim,” he said. “Remember, our best years are ahead of us.”

We hugged and I went to my room. I turned out the lights, lay back in bed, and put the hot cloth on my face. I did my best to clear my mind. For the first Christmas Eve in years I felt peace. “Merry Christmas,” I said to myself. “And a happy New Year.” I quickly fell asleep.

My father woke me the next morning with his Bible in hand and a cheerful “Merry Christmas.” It had always been our tradition to read from the second chapter of Luke on Christmas morning. Afterward we went out to the tree and opened presents. I had bought him a big bag of turkey jerky, socks, a plush bathrobe, and a book on raising saltwater fish. “You can take that back,” I said.

He had bought me a new laptop computer. “This is too much,” I said.

“It's for your writing,” he said. “And here.” He handed me another present to unwrap. Inside was a describer's dictionary. “I read online that that really helps.”

I didn't know what to say. “Dad, no one's going to publish me.”

“Who cares?” he said. “I'm not going to get signed by a record label but it doesn't stop me from singing in the shower.”

“It should,” I said, laughing.

He also laughed. “It should, but it won't. So you write because you love to write. It's how you sing. Remember that.”

I couldn't help but smile. “Thanks, Dad.”