My Friend Jackie – Non-Fiction Story Excerpt
December 2016
Late Christmas Eve. We had just arrived home from our traditional tamale dinner at my sister’s home and I sat down at my desk for a moment to open my email. New emails bounced in. One, from a former government coworker – she worked in Sacramento, I worked in LA – I opened with curiosity, for she had already sent me a family newsy card by mail. In her new message, she thanked me for my emailed Christmas letter and photomontage – I was glad she received it and opened it – then she asked me if I had heard about Jackie.
My breathing stopped for a moment. I remembered a phone call I once received when I was still working from a coworker in another office. He started the call by asking if I was a friend of Gladys. I said yes. He then said his manager thought so, and that she had wanted me to know that Gladys had died suddenly and that her funeral was the next evening.
The email continued – Jackie had died some months ago, and she was not sure when she died. Jackie died in her house and her body found a few days after. That’s all the information she had. She had heard it from another former coworker, who had heard it from someone else.
I was stunned numb. This was shocking. I closed the email, got up from my desk in my study, went into our bedroom, and sat down on my thinking, reading, wingback chair. I heard my youngest granddaughter laughing – she did not seem sleepy, that was for sure. I…didn’t know what to think or feel right now about Jackie. After a moment, I determined to think of something else for a while. I’d decided to think of how full of family this particular Christmas Eve had been.
***
It was a wonderful Christmas Eve, the best in years, my older daughter said. Yes, the best in many years, for our older daughter and her family lived close-by here in LA, but usually traveled to Missouri for Christmas to be with my son-in-law’s family, but this year they had stayed in California and were with us on Christmas Eve and they would be back tomorrow for Christmas dinner. And our middle daughter and son-in-law and their baby had already traveled down from Sacramento to be with us, and tomorrow, on Christmas Day, our third daughter, the youngest and her husband, would come in from New York. Then all three beloved daughters – a corny expression, but true – would be here, together with husbands and their children – six grandchildren for us at least, only our step-grandson from New York missing – and much missed – instead needing to spend Christmas and New Year’s with his great-grandmother in Florida, who was really getting on in years.
And at the Christmas Eve tamale gathering at my sister’s condo, our youngest grandchild, a beautiful little girl, my middle daughter’s first, only six months old, was, of course, the newest sparkling light within the family and the star attraction, shining like the angel atop the artificial Christmas tree in our own family room. But, instead of an angel in flight, she was a happy baby in arms, who, on Christmas Eve – between loud greetings and chaotic hugs and kisses and mouthfuls of tamales, beans and rice, and deliciously warm tortillas – was passed easily and without fear or fuss from great-aunts and uncles to my oldest daughter and her husband and then all back again with many repeated side-trips to her older curious and excited cousins, including the boys who in their early teenage years, were more uncles to her than cousins.
Now, this Christmas Eve had started for me with an early evening service at the church where my son-in-law was pastor to a small congregation – thirty adults and tons of excited children – housed in a small, unheated, warehouse space, where a few Sundays before – after about a year and a half of split attendance between this warehouse gathering and my much, much, larger home church – on a sunny but cold California winter morning, I had silently laughed deep within, for this unheated warehouse church was obviously a blessing, and just what the Lord knew I needed.
For I had purposely sat down upon one of the black metal folding chairs – the only ones with a cushion – one of the very few physical comforts available in the warehouse, but one that kept my bottom from the cold metal, not an insignificant blessing for a man who describes himself as a certified California hothouse pansy and proud of it. But my back was still cold even with the sweater and coat I had learned to wear. For the big garage door was open, as usual, to allow the children free access to the parking lot where in a safe roped-off space, they played and had their own bible lesson, at times shouting or laughing a little too loud so that I could not always hear the sermon, and I lost a bit of it here, and another piece there, leaving a few little holes in the sermon notes I was taking.
And the sound system, which did not always work well, was even worse that Sunday, with so much static and breakup that it was eventually turned off. Not critical for such a small space, except, again, for the multiple small voices laughing and shouting and intruding in intervals from outside. And the words to the worship songs and hymns projected upon the brick wall that Sunday were in critical need of a spellcheck. And this was a church, as I began to think about it, where at times the guest guitarist leading worship in song was barefoot – and not just during the summer!
And, as if all this was not enough, all these “unique” aspects of the church and service felt right in place with the fact that this warehouse space only had a single seater restroom for everyone – all the adults and all the kids! – the door of which I always had to keep an anxious eye on after the sermon to ensure a timely entry into the restroom to return the warm, not hot, coffee my body had borrowed when I had first arrived in the cold of the morning!
And…it was for all these deficiencies, downsides, inconveniences, and problematic anxious facts, that I laughed and thanked God for, for these things were truly part of the answer to my prayers. Prayers for a quiet place of refuge – a place of refuge away from the rising cacophony of all the disquieting political noise and campaign nonsense swirling within my much, much, larger, heated, and professional home church. All mindlessly emanating from all the various pulpits, minimizing for many, I feared, the simple hearing of the hope and life within the gospel. And everything there becoming a growing, weighted, burden within my heart.
And the answer to my prayer and the cause of my laughter? It was this noisy peace, and the inner quiet of the joy in the Lord, frequently intruded upon by the shouts and laughter of the children outside, coupled with the imperfectly framed and non-professionally expressed worship inside, and all this shared by the people gathered within this less than adequate, cold, small warehouse space, of which I was now part.
And the burden and growing grief I felt for my much larger home church, and this joy and life I found and appreciated as a fresh, invigorating air of faith within the small church pastored by my son-in-law, I had once shared with Jackie in framing a response to a question she had come to very cautiously ask.
And that night…at this warehouse church…the service led by my son-in-law and the two elders – all in jeans, and tee-shirts or sweatshirts – with one of my granddaughters sitting beside me on her own cushioned black metal chair, was perhaps the best Christmas Eve service I have ever attended. It was a time of quiet joyful worship. And the words we sang, “For in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light,” from “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, took on new meaning. For here upon the cold bare concrete floor and within the unadorned concrete block walls, as I held my coffee cup with both hands to warm them, the gospel light was shining, the same light and hope that shone within a common stable that first Christmas night, a light again shining brightly for me within the dim small unheated warehouse space. Yes, a blessed Christmas Eve service of peace, even the best ever.
And from the service, my oldest daughter’s family and I had all traveled in multiple cars to my sister’s condo where the entire larger family was gathering for our traditional Christmas Eve tamale feast. It was brave and gracious for our sister to again host our tamale dinner as she had in many past years, as she was beginning chemotherapy for stage-four cancer.
After the family gathering, my wife and I and my daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter from Sacramento left for our house, and my oldest daughter and her family left for theirs, the five grandchildren excited about returning to our house the next day to open Christmas presents and partake of the glorious Christmas turkey dinner.
When we came home from our family Christmas Eve tamale feast, I went to my study to check my email for late Christmas greetings and letters from friends. Some emails were Christmas letters in their own right and others were late responses to some of my own not-so-timely email greetings.
About a week before Christmas, I had finally gotten out our annual Christmas letter and photo montage to all of my family and friends – forty-eight by email, three of them by mail to older close folks not having email, nor actually even a computer. Now, at least, with these late arriving emails, there was usually more, though sometimes just a little bit more, than the “Love, So-and-So”, on some mailed cards received from folks I only heard from once a year – which drove me crazy. However, even that was better than not hearing anything – electronically or via mail – and of those, I had a few, Jackie being one.
I had sent a Christmas email greeting to Jackie, even though she had not responded to the email or the written note I had sent her in early June, telling her we were hoping to see her when we came up to Sacramento for the birth of my middle daughter’s first baby sometime in June. The Post Office eventually returned my note as undeliverable, no forwarding address, but the email had not bounced back, and I reasoned that perhaps Jackie had moved, as she had indicated that might be a possibility when we had last seen her the previous November. Also, not receiving an email or phone reply to my contacts was not totally unusual, as there had been periods of time in the past when Jackie did not readily respond to any contacts.
And for a moment, after I read the email with the message of Jackie’s death, I wondered if in fact she had moved and forgot to put in a change of address and then died somewhere else, and that she had not received my email because…she had not set up her computer yet, and…had not picked up my calls because… In my mind, I returned to the email message and as I mulled it over, I remembered that it had said she had died in her house…so, she must have died before I sent the email message, before I mailed my letter…and…
Then…Jackie’s face…began to emerge in my mind…as the last time we saw her, as she greeted us at the restaurant. An oval, ruddy-pale, slightly overweight face, hair cut short – her hair was always short – smallish glasses flashing the overhead lights of the restaurant where we met her, dangling earrings – like she always wore – smiling with thin closed lips, shaking her head slightly side to side, almost like a cartoon character, happy, serious and amused, friendly and thoughtful, light-hearted and hesitant and deep, all at the same time. A bundle of constant moving energy, animation and thought always playing and resting upon her face, greeting my wife and me with hugs and exclamations, yes, exclamations of joy and satisfaction in seeing us, her earrings bouncing, twirling…
Abruptly I stopped – this was as far as I was going to allow myself to think of Jackie this Christmas Eve, as I still had deep joys to attend to among the loved ones, little and big, within the house.
I got up and went to the bedroom that had once been my middle daughter’s when she was with us, and where she and her husband choose to be while visiting. At the door, I could hear the now quieter and softer sounds of my little granddaughter still not asleep. I knocked on the door – my daughter might be nursing – then with permission, I entered and gently kissed the little one multiple times good night.
When the baby was asleep, we then all gathered in the living room and enjoyed a quiet time around the fireplace, the blaze within it made of elm for heat, juniper for its incense smell of a freshly sharpened grammar school pencil, and carefully placed pine to provide the crackling pops and sparkles so homey and comforting. Yes, still, even though I was a little subdued privately, this was a glorious Christmas Eve, as we now felt the soothing warmth of the fire, eating chocolate and cookies with a late-night cup of tea, as Christmas Day drew upon us within an hour at midnight.
***
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This is truly beautiful. I felt like I was there. This story reminded me of when I got the news that one of my very dearest true friends had succumbed to colon cancer. She was the best friend I ever had. Really. True to the end. She passed in the middle of Covid. There was no gathering for her. I felt very sad. Maybe one day I will run into her wonderful two kids. I hope I do. I know she is with Jesus. I had no idea your family ate tamales at Christmas. Gosh. My sister always brings tamales to our Christmas gathering. All of us married non-Hispanics, so we always had other traditional Christmas fare. So we get both! America is a great place! Christmas is hard for me because I miss my parents so much. But I know I will see them again. I am happy to know there are families like mine. Close knit families who grew up with good parents. You illustrated this very well Chris in this story. We learned from our parents the importance of family.