At Christmas, too: Everything’s the same, and everything’s different

I sat across from a longtime friend for a visit on the day after Thanksgiving. In many ways, it was just like always. She asked about my kids, and I asked about hers. She told me about her holiday just past, and I told about ours. Before I left, she insisted I take a piece of candy for myself from the basket beside her, and, of course, another for Evelyn. She has always been a person who thinks first about others.

But this visit was different than any before. She sat in a wheelchair; her small room was in the facility where she was receiving rehab after a serious hip break. I thought of so many other visits to her home with tours around her diverse and well-tended garden. Would I ever see it again?

I saw her alone because Evelyn didn’t seem willing to muster the energy to get up, get dressed, and go with me to visit this friend. I wonder, when will all three of us sit together again? My friend and Evelyn had had a special bond, but today was not the same. 

Where time has taken us

Nostalgic as I am, I was almost overwhelmed to think of all Evelyn and I had known with this friend and her husband. He had been my friend first. But the relationship had blossomed into visits back and forth in each other’s’ homes, since the time all our children were young. Excursions to the zoo and King’s Island, concert-going, dinners out—decades of laughter from stories I still love to tell, deep conversations, shared interests.

It all flashed before me as I thought of where time has taken us now: dealing with losses we had never paused to anticipate.

What hasn’t changed, when so much has

If years ago we really believed life for us would always be the same, maybe we weren’t completely wrong. Because although life changes, in many ways we do not.

My wife’s favorite class in her college teaching days was a course in human development. Each year, when she got to the unit on old age, invariably she would remark to me, “In many ways, we’re the same people at 80 as we were at 30.” Now that I’m older, I see how she was right.

In many ways, we’re the same people at 80 as we were at 30.

Throughout our lives we display the same temperaments and personalities and instincts. Doers do; thinkers think; talkers talk, today just as they have for decades.

Several years ago a friend asked me to be the narrator for the residents’ musical program he was directing at our local retirement center. It was a Hollywood revue, full of movie themes and songs everybody knows. His choir of senior citizens included several excellent singers, and I remember one soprano soloist perfectly performing a sentimental love song. Her voice was clear and compelling, but even more impressive was her emotion displayed in every note and facial expression. All the warm glow that comes with romance was the same to this septuagenarian as it is for any 20-year-old, even though she sang to a room full of friends with wheelchairs and walkers.

Perhaps what I’m thinking today dawns on anyone past the 70-year-old milestone. Everything’s the same, but everything’s different. We don’t change, but our bodies do, along with our circumstances. Every day we’re blessed by the dependable progress of the seasons. We still marvel at drifts of untouched snow or the wonder of an orange and purple sunset. But sometimes we need glasses to clearly see, and once in a while we’re just too tired to notice.

How we’ll celebrate: as usual—sort of

This is how it is with Christmas for us this year. It’s the same as always, and also altogether different.

As usual, I’ve put up lights in our front yard, but only a few so far. And I’m wondering if I’ll find the time and energy to finish even the scaled-back display I was planning. 

Soon we’ll enjoy dinner and exchange gifts with our friends we see almost every Saturday night. But that will be our only Christmas “party” this year, a highlight among three weeks of home-alone evenings with holiday specials on TV.

Like every Christmas, music is everywhere these days, and we do plan to attend a Christmas concert at a local church. But I’m going with a little trepidation that it will be hard for Evelyn to sit through it. And for the first time in many years, we won’t get downtown to enjoy Cincinnati symphony’s gala holiday production.

All the family is coming for Christmas, and my kids have told me they’ll prepare the Christmas meal because cooking for eight isn’t something I need to try to do.

They’re right, of course. We want a Christmas dinner like the ones we’ve always enjoyed. It wouldn’t be the same without it.

But, of course, it won’t be the same with it, either.

I glance across the room to see my wife resting on the couch in the middle of the day. She reads aloud from a magazine she’s already seen several times before. I doubt she retains a word of it. This afternoon she isn’t yet demonstrating the agitation I’m beginning to see many evenings, but I know I will cope with it again. She was up and not sure why several times in the night just passed.

I’m tired, but I hope family gathered close this year will make Christmas something close to the same as always, even as I admit it surely will be different than ever before.

Photos by Tatomm and Davizro at iStockphotos.