ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512080054
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN
ON THE KITCHEN table the other night when I returned home, a letter was waiting. It wasn't addressed to me, but my wife had put it out for me to read.
The address on the envelope: Santa Claus, North Pole.
On yellow, lined paper, painstakingly scrawled in a 6-year-old's hand, with a few S's and C's reversed, the note was legible enough. It said:
Dear Santa
I think i have been good. But if I Was good can I have a nice picture of Granny and Lilly and can I have a surprise.
From, Nell Sorensen
What can you say about such a letter ?
My mother-in-law, Patricia Detchon, died this spring.
Granny loved all her grandchildren. But Nell, the little one, had slept in a bed next to hers on visits, had sat endlessly on her lap toying with her jewelry, had stood patiently while Granny untangled and braided Nell's hair.
Besides my wife - who was uncommonly close to her and still grieves deeply - Nell, I believe, took Granny's death hardest in our family.
Lilly we had only a few months. She was a pygmy goat, a baby pet that bounded about our back yard, jumped onto furniture, and drank warm milk from a bottle administered by our kids. She was devoured this summer, we don't know by what.
Neither Granny nor Lilly was mine, but I married the daughter of one, buried the body of the other. Their fate has been, evidently, on Nell's mind as well.
Out of the blue this summer, she'd startle us with questions like: "How old will you be when you die?"
The queries have grown less frequent in recent months - whether because Nell has come to terms with the subject or because, like all half-soulish/half-animal beings, she has evolved a strategy for distracting herself from mortality, I don't know.
At Granny's funeral this spring, Nell let go of my hand and walked to where the ashes had been freshly buried. Close to the breach in the ground, she squatted, silent for a minute, not looking at the earth but not seeming to look at anything else either, before quietly returning to the assembled mourners.
Last week, late on the night that I had read the letter to the North Pole, I looked out a window where swirls of snow blotted out the blackness beyond, and thought about Christmas. Both my parents remain happily alive; we'll be seeing them in the weeks ahead. But to Granny's house we've gone every Christmas, that I can remember, in the lives of our children. This will be the first without her.
I'm glad new joys always materialize to sustain us: daily reminders of a spouse's abiding companionship, the sound of our 11-year-old playing her violin with feeling, the surviving eagerness of our 8-year-old to jump into our arms or onto our backs.
Or Nell's reply when asked a week ago what she wanted for Christmas.
"Not too much," she said. "I don't want to get spoiled."
I don't doubt she'll find wrapped photos of Granny and Lilly beneath the tree Christmas Day. Nor do I doubt the morning will bring surprises, too.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB