The shop attendant wondered why the lady wanted to order a Christmas tree. He gave her an odd look and asked again how he could help her. Maybe he’d heard wrong the first time.
“I want your largest Christmas tree.” She said again unfazed, bright smile still in place.
“Well,” he replied slowly, trying to pick his words carefully. After all, the customer was always right! “I’m pretty sure we can get you a tree as big as you want but we don’t have them in stock now. You can place your order from the first week of…”
“Oh sorry! You got me wrong!” she was still smiling.
He heaved a mental sigh of relief and returned her smile. The smile died with her next words.
“I need a tree now, not in December!”
He was speechless for a moment. She kept smiling.
“Well… I’ll see what we can do about that. Just give me a moment.”
Time to get the manager to handle this one, whoever wanted a Christmas tree in May?!
Well, Miranda did. And it didn’t matter what anyone else thought, she was going to get the biggest tree she could possibly find and Christmas was going to be a blast, her very best ever! ….because the doctors had said there was nothing they could do. They’d said her mother had 3, at most 4 months left.
…because they’d said chemotherapy would be futile, the chances were close to nothing, it would only make a hard journey harder.
…because her mother had decided she wanted to spend what little time she had left surrounded by her family. Make up for lost time. Make up for time to be lost. There would be no birthdays or vacations or Thanksgiving. She wouldn’t be there when the baby arrived. All the memories that would never be made, the ones that would fade with her.
Then Miranda realised that there were things she couldn’t change, things she couldn’t fight. But that which she could do was not waste the little time she had left with her mother on regrets, on past hurts, on un-resolved issues. It was time to make the memories, build bridges, tear down walls. So much to do, so little time! Call her brothers. Wrap the presents. Plan the menu. Put out the stockings. Get out the turkey baster. String up the lights. Hang the holly, tell her mother a million times in a million different ways she was loved. Oh, and the tree, a very big tree, how could she have forgotten that?! It would be the most beautiful moment ever when her mother came home finally from the hospital. Well, even if she was powerless to do anything about her mother dying, she would put the spark back in her eyes one last time. Christmas had come real early…
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