OUR CHRISTMAS ANGEL
Our son John, our only child was taken away from us on June 28, 2000 in a work site accident. John was 27 years old. After John’s death we started grief counseling at the Amelia Center and one of the things we learned was that we needed to get to a new normal as things would never again be the normal we had known for those 27 years.
We have always been people who make lists, store items in designated areas, etc. We decided this year we would change all ornaments on our Christmas tree except for the crystal ornaments that we have collected over the years. As stated earlier these ornaments had a special display case so that we could enjoy them all year long. This case only held these crystal ornaments.
The day after Thanksgiving we began to gather the tree, all the new ornaments and the display case for the crystal ornaments. We assembled the tree and attached the new ornaments, ribbons etc. While I was sitting in a chair with the crystal ornament display case in front of me and was handing the ornaments to David I felt one of the ornaments “tug” and I looked closely to see if it was caught on another one and what I saw was something so unexpected that we were at a loss for words.
When John was in day care in December 1974 someone had made a ceramic boy angel with John’s name and the year on it. This ornament had a special box with cotton below it and on top so that it would not get broken. We do not know why that ornament did not get put away in it’s special box when we took the tree down in 1999.
David and I both cried and said that the angel would have to be on our tree. At first we put it near the back of the tree and the more I thought about it I told David that “Our Christmas Angel” would have to be in a more prominent place on the tree and we moved it to the front where it could be seen.
Even though John is no longer with us physically we have him in spirit and in our hearts. We feel this must have been God’s way of letting us remember that John is always near in our hearts and memories.