Cookies, Felt Stockings and Endless Love

Another Christmas begins as the snow falls here in Michigan. Across the fields, it swirls around the ranch in fine, powdery flurries. Soon, the cousins and siblings will arrive.

Besides the packages and presents and the food they'll carry in from their cars, they'll also bring the cherished memories of our family.

Of the love that we've shared. Of happiness and sadness. Of the new traditions we've started and the ones we keep in our memories.

My youngest sister met a stranger at work this week. The woman approached her, introduced herself and said she had an important message to share with her.

"Meg, your sister wanted me to tell you something important. She knows you'll all be together for Christmas Day this year - and she wants you to know she'll be there with you."

She told her other things too, of which only my youngest sister would know.

So I thought it would be a good day to tell this story again; one I wrote a few years ago.

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I think this rickety old house knows it will soon be sold, along with its quirks and antiques, its funny smells and its memories.

Today, Kellie visited the house for a final tour. As she walked past the dining room mirror, I could almost see Cathy on her arm, in bell-bottoms and a sweater. Just the way this place remembers her. And the way I do.

To Cathy, who left us last winter, Kellie was one of the inseparable few.  Like Sally and Bobbie, they seemed to be souls connected in early childhood - and maybe long before that.

And now, too often, the vacuum of Cathy's absence seems like an empty ocean that needs filling.

On a bitter and cold January night, I told Sally that we'd miss how Cathy helped each of us feel important. That who we are, that what we'd accomplished, who we were - in that moment in time - was special. She made our lives feel special because she believed in our goodness.

"I remember our first day in this house, before you moved in," Kellie said as we walked through the dining room.  "Cathy and I counted all the knobs in the kitchen because we'd never seen so many before. There were 57."  Just like Cathy to see wonder in every little thing, like the number of kitchen knobs.

I offered Kellie a laminated copy of Cathy's secret cookie recipe, which Meg found in the back of a cookbook in the kitchen.  She smiled, "She never wanted me to have this whole recipe; she'd just give me parts of it and leave me wondering why my cookies were never as good as hers," she said, laughing. "I won't take it now, but I will take a picture of it."

Just like Kellie to keep the joke rolling between heaven and earth.

As we passed through rooms and closets and different parts of the house, she'd recall what the two of them did there.  "Your mother asked us to make chocolate chip cookies so often in this kitchen that we used to time how fast we could finish a batch. I think our fastest time was eight and a half minutes."

She told us how they felt when they first saw the house, with dried fall leaves and dust covering the parquet floors. I'm sure we both thought of the transformation that would happen as we filled those same rooms with Simon and Garfunkel music, high school parties, and holidays.

Like Christmas.  When Cathy would decorate it with pieces of herself.

Every Christmas, from bolts of felt, Cathy would create Christmas stockings for each of us. With scissors and glue, she'd decorate each of them with illustrations.  They were her portraits of us - painting, cooking, our dolls, our music, our sports - us. They were her way of reminding us of how we were special. To her. And for us.

And we were.  Together, we were.

Of course, her green parrot, Charlie, was always portrayed on her stocking. Charlie, now an adopted member of Sally's family - spoiled and indestructible.

Last night, I received a text from my son Andrew. He was telling me how much he loved that Katie, his sister, was again making felt stockings for our family. About asking him for ideas for her boyfriend's family.

He said, "For a moment I was sad because it reminded me of how much I missed Cathy. But then I thought how cool it was that Cathy lived on through Katie."

Cathy lives on in so many different ways. In felt stockings, in turquoise Christmas ornament parties that her inseparable soul-mates host in her honor, in stories and smiles, and in much much more.

Even in Sally's new adopted parrot.

But mostly she lives on in us - as we find ways to remember that we are special and that our lives are wonderful - which we thought would be unimaginable without her.

Now, her lingering sweetness - and goodness - is part of us, all around us. It is an endless love.

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And we know Cathy will always be with us. Every day.

Every Christmas.

Especially this year.