Last Christmas

“We want to be with her on Christmas.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

I was in the middle of my fourth arrangement meeting that day. The holidays are the busiest time of year for funeral homes for various reasons. It’s cold, so a lot of nursing home residents come down with pneumonia and can’t shake it. It’s lonely, so a lot of people tend to end their lives. It’s a joyful season, so people tend to over imbibe and then get behind the wheel of a car.

It’s the time of year that makes most of us want to tear our hair out at work. It’s also the time of year for interesting requests from the families that we serve. This was one of them.

Christmas was Elsie’s favorite time of year. The matriarch of a large family, she loved to host the holidays at her home, with her children and grandchildren flying in from all over the country. Even a great-grandson who flies in all the way from Germany because he’s a "lieutenant in the army thank-you-very-much”.

Elsie had planned a huge welcome dinner, with games, and toys, and presents. She had the Christmas movies planned out for the family movie night. She even had purchased matching pajamas that she had planned for all of them to wear for the annual silly photo.

Elsie hadn’t planned on getting sick, and she certainly hadn’t planned on dying 4 days before Christmas.

Her family had never spent a Christmas without her, and they weren’t ready to.

"We weren’t prepared for this to be her last Christmas with us. We would really like to have that if you could help make that happen.”

I didn’t know what to do. She was asking a lot of us. I certainly didn’t want to work on Christmas, and I didn’t want to put that on the team I was working with either. So I brought this to the owner of the funeral home. I explained what the family wanted to do and asked her opinion.

She told me to speak with the team, and ask for volunteers. It was my call, but if I got no volunteers, I would be the one working.

So I asked. I asked my team if this is what they wanted to do, and I didn’t just get one volunteer, I got five. Five volunteers to hold down the fort in shifts so that this family could have Christmas with their family, and we would all be able to go home to ours.

I was at work late that year on Christmas Eve. We brought in a tree, hung wreaths, and lights, and made sure Elsie was dressed in her holiday pajamas. She was wearing her traditional holiday elf hat, and had everything ready when her family arrived to put the presents under the tree.

There wasn’t a traditional funeral. No songs were sung, no obituary was read. Just a family who needed that last Christmas with their matriarch.

I remember initially thinking that it was such a strange request, but in that moment, I understood. Watching the kids on the floor of the chapel opening their presents and the family in their matching pajamas was beautiful.

I got to my parents’ house in time for Christmas morning. As we sat around our Christmas tree, opening gifts and laughing, I felt a sense of peace that we were able to give that to Elsie’s family one more time. The first holiday without someone you love is always the hardest, but it was something they didn’t have to do alone.

Hold your loved ones tight. Happy Holidays.