Advent – Love – Day 25

There’s a table set for dinner, and the guests are about to arrive.

Ivory china plates are rimmed with gold, and the crystal stemware sparkles by candlelight. The forks, knives, and spoons all have their proper places, and your handmade evergreen centerpiece is worthy enough for Martha Stewart to call it a “good thing.” Someone took extra time with the ruby-red cloth napkins, folding them into fans that sit in the middle of the plates. 

Nah, who are we kidding? If you’re like me and my bunch, the napkins are torn from a roll of paper towels, which are most likely not Bounty. One time, we tried to be fancy and fold them like the swans we had seen in a cruise ship dining room, but they turned out looking more like a bad haircut from circa 2002.

Rest assured, we’ve got real Chinet plates, because they hold up to the weight of the Christmas feast, but you can forget our cups being the Solo brand. We’ve got the only set they had left at the Dollar General, and we use a black permanent marker to write our names on the sides so as not to spread the crud, strep, or norovirus, or to accidentally take a swig from Papaw’s spit cup after he’s set it down to say the blessing over the food.

And then we file through the line, filling our plates from the greatest homemade buffet of the year, surrounded by our family and friends—

Except for the one who left us,

The one who always made the dressing,

The one who insisted on making some weird congealed salad that never held its shape.

The one who left his spit cup out, and you smile remembering the year the grandbaby was the one who took a swig.

Can’t blame her—she couldn’t read.

She’s now in college, and you think, how proud he would be of her.

Oh, but he still sits around the table of your heart, and he always will.

We find a spot to settle, a place not assigned to us because there are so many of us that we spill into the living room, onto the porch, and down to the basement. My, how the family has grown.

But in your memory, he will always occupy the spot at the head of the table, or the recliner, or the folding chair under the shade tree in the yard.

And even though we believe, as Paul said, that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord,” try telling your heart that on a holiday, or any day.

For we are here, and they are there, separated by a thing we do not fully understand. We only know that it hurts, and we miss their presence.

We want them here with us. God did not need another angel. Don’t try to sell me that sentimental line of false belief. We’re already sick to our stomach with grief and loss, and saying such things pins the blame on a good God who needs no melodramatic help from us.

I look around at others in my little town, and I’m met with the faces of those who are grieving, the ones for whom this is the first Christmas without their loved one. Or it’s the second, or the 10th, or the 32nd.

I count back in my mind to the year the accident or the sickness happened. Has it really been that long ago?

When I see them at church, at the post office, or at Dollar General, while I’m buying whatever items I’ve got to have to make Christmas just that much more perfect, I pray, “Have mercy, Lord. Ease their pain.” I wait until I get back to my car before letting the tears fall.

And I ask myself, Lord, is there anything I can do to help?

Fix a batch of cookies? Drop in for a visit? Send them a card?

Maybe so, but it’s hard to know what to do sometimes. Grief strikes in unexpected ways, and no one wants to heap additional pain on top of an already emotional holiday season.

I could try being angry on their behalf, but that wouldn’t do much good, either. I’d just end up either eating my way through a hunk of cheese or siphoning off one or two or ten cookies from the batch I’ve baked to take to them.

I could try ignoring the emotions, push them down, say to be stronger and to have more faith, but that denies the grief process the space it needs to try to come full circle.

So what can I do?

Maybe I can write something, to tell people that they are seen and loved. 

To tell them that there are so many out there who are remembering right along with them.

We hurt for them. We share in their pain.

We all hold a table in our hearts for the ones who will never sit around the real one again.

But I also want to tell them that they are safely gathered around His table, where there are no tears, no grief, no sickness, and no pain.

They need no candlelight or Chinets or paper towels, for they are living forever in the Father’s love, and one day, you will too.

You’ll have come full circle, and maybe from the other side, everything will all make sense.

Until then, let memory serve its good purpose:

The table of my heart holds PawPaw, who wrote “Mele Kalikimaka” on his Christmas cards to me.

Grandma, who smiled wide and picked me up after I’d slipped off a chair.

Granddaddy, whose large laugh filled the room when I tacked on a rhyme after the prayer that one year. “Amen . . . now back your ears and cram it in!”

Nanny, who gave me practical items during her last Christmas, clothing too large to wear at the time. 

I didn’t understand it then, but now I do. She knew her time was short.

But as she held me in the future, I, too, carry her along with me.

I carry them all.

There’s a table set for dinner, and the guests are about to arrive.

I thank my God every time I remember you.

Philippians 1:3 NIV

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Reflection and Prayer: The holiday season has a way of bringing deep emotion to the surface, especially when thinking of our loved ones who are no longer this side of Heaven. How can you honor their memory? May God bring us comfort and peace as we treasure the love we will always hold for them in our hearts.