Twas the night before Christmas

by Spangly Beans

His loose change was still by the side of the bed. I dusted around the handful of coppers, trying never to move the clumsy pile of one’s and two’s. Every night before getting into bed he would empty his trouser pockets onto the bedside cabinet, ready to be picked back up and shoved in his pocket the next morning before heading off to work. They were the last thing he touched.

The women in our family have an uncanny and tragic habit of losing their husbands young, so when Andy, a tender 42 years old, went to bed that night and never woke up the next morning, I should have seen it coming. My mother was widowed before her fortieth birthday and had picked herself up with a superhero level of stoicism, and she was adamant that I would follow suit. With two small children to care for and a full time job to hold down, I’d donned sunglasses for the first few months of summer to hide from the sympathetic gaze of concerned friends and colleagues. Summer turned to autumn, and as the nights drew in I increasingly fumbled around the house. ‘For God’s sake Lucy,’ my mum admonished, ‘You keep bumping into things. Take the damn sunglasses off and get over yourself.’ Compassionate woman, my mother.

As the year seeped away, I began to dread Christmas. Andy had loved Christmas more than anyone I knew, and every bauble and string of tinsel was a reminder of him. We’d always had a real tree, and each year was a trek to the garden centre, tape measure in hand, for Andy to make sure we had the biggest tree we could possibly squeeze into our lounge. We went artificial the first year without him, and I felt sorry for the sales assistant in Argos who had to witness my tears as she passed the cardboard box across the crowded counter.

Christmas Eve, and the house was groaning under the weight of an overcompensated celebration, the kids with a level of excitement that I felt a betrayal of their father. We curled up on the sofa watching trashy TV and drinking too sweet hot chocolate. Hannah handed me a battered copy of ‘The Night Before Christmas.’ ‘Can you read this to us Mummy’ I took the book but couldn’t open it. Callum, curled up the other side of me, snatched it from my hands. ‘She can’t’ he shouted, full of all the seven year old rage he can muster, ‘That was daddy’s job.’ And he’s right, I couldn’t. It was Andy’s job alright. Every Christmas Eve he would read it to the kids, starting when I was pregnant with Hannah when he whispered the words, head rested on my bulging tummy. ‘It’ll be our own family tradition,’ he’d said, ‘This will be our thing, for this baby, and all the other babies we’ll have.’

Hannah wriggled away from me and pulled the Ipad onto her lap. She fired up a video, and it took my breath away. All three of us are drawn into a video that I barely remember taking, of three years ago, Hannah and Callum squirming on Andy’s lap, as he starts. ‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house…..’

We fell silent at the end, tears rolling down our cheeks. ‘Happy Christmas Daddy.’ whispered Callum.

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