Catching Christmas

by Terri Blackstock

  She nods, distracted, and lets me escort her down the hall and back to the car, and it isn’t until I pull out of the parking lot that she takes a deep breath. “I think I’m gonna faint.”

  “Then you should breathe,” I say, taking her hand. “Just take a deep breath and let it out slowly.”

  She does as I say . . . breathes in . . . then out. “I don’t want to say good-bye to my grandmother. I’m not ready. I haven’t known her long enough.”

  “I know,” I say. “It always seems too soon.” My mind wanders back to my mother, when I finally went to her grave about two weeks too late. I sat on the grass and wept like a baby, hating myself for letting her down.

  “Where are we going?” Sydney asks.

  “To the church,” I remind her. “To talk to the hot Dr. Seagrove. He was one of Callie’s picks for you.”

  She smirks. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

  “But he seemed to like her a lot, so it shouldn’t be a terrible experience. You might even get a date out of it.”

  Laughter pushes through her mood. “Stop, okay? I don’t want you to make me laugh.”

  “Sorry. I just want you to feel better, and to know that this isn’t going to be as hard as you think.”

  “I guess I can’t put it off.” Tears rush to her eyes, and I pull out a Kleenex and hand it to her. She dabs at her eyes.

  We get to the church, and I park. Sydney doesn’t move to get out. “Do you think we should have made an appointment? Maybe I should’ve called first.”

  “I’m sure it’s okay. When I took Callie, she walked right in. He was happy to see her.”

  “But it’s the day after Christmas.”

  “People work the day after Christmas.”

  I get out and walk around to her door. She gets out but just stands there for a moment, looking toward the building. “You can lean on me for support,” I say. “No one expects you to be strong today.”

  “But I want to be strong,” she says. “I don’t want to be a wilting rose. I’m not like that. I don’t want you to think—”

  I put my arm around her. “Sydney, your being upset over your grandmother’s death is not weak. Trust me, I know weak.”

  We go in, and I lead her to the office. The secretary smiles, and it seems genuine. “Is Dr. Seagrove in?”

  “Yes, he is. Can I tell him who’s here?”

  “Callie Beecher’s granddaughter,” Sydney says.

  “Oh, sure. We love Miss Callie. She is such a sweetie. Always makes us laugh.”

  The secretary gets to the door of the pastor’s office, but before opening it she looks back at Sydney. “I hope you haven’t come to give us bad news about her.”

  Sydney’s eyes glisten. “Grammy passed away yesterday. In her sleep.”

  The secretary’s hand goes to her heart. “On Christmas Day? Oh, honey!” She comes back and hugs Sydney. “Oh, darlin’, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Sydney says.

  The secretary looks shaken as she knocks on the pastor’s door and steps inside to whisper to him. When she comes back and opens the door wider, Dr. Seagrove is coming around the desk, a serious look on his face. “You’re Callie’s granddaughter? I’ve heard lots about you.”

  “I bet you have,” she says. “I’m sorry about that, Dr. . . .”

  “Please, call me Randy,” he says. “And what’s your name?”

  “Sydney. And this is Finn.”

  “Yes, I remember you, Finn. So she passed away yesterday?”

  The words passed away have always baffled me. I don’t understand why people find it so hard to use the word died about their loved ones. I use passed away myself when I talk about my mother’s death.

  We make small talk for a few minutes, then Sydney asks if he will officiate at the funeral. “Of course I will. And I’ll let her church family know. A lot of our members will want to come pay Callie their respects. She was a very cherished member of our congregation until she was homebound. But now that we’re talking about her funeral, there’s some stuff I need to tell you.” He goes to open a cabinet drawer, digs to the back of it, and pulls out a shoebox.

  “You know, it’s funny. Miss Callie always had strange requests, and she sometimes had us jump through hoops. She gave us all a lot of chuckles. But one day a few weeks ago, she came in here with a tape recorder and insisted on recording something in front of me. She said that when she died she wanted me to get this to you. She even left a cassette player in this box because she felt sure you wouldn’t have one to play it on.”

  “A tape?” Sydney asks. “For me?”

  “It’s not very long,” Seagrove says. “At the time I thought she was being a little melodramatic. But she insisted you hear this from her.”

  He plugs in the tape recorder and puts the cassette in. He presses Play and sits back. We hear Callie’s cheerful voice, as if she’s right here with us. “Pastor, I’ve told you about my lovely granddaughter, Sydney,” she says. “You know, she isn’t married. I would love for you to meet her. You can’t stay single forever.”

  Sydney covers her face, horrified. I laugh with the pastor, picturing Callie shaking her finger at him.

  “I guess you’re right,” he tells Callie with a chuckle.

  “So when you’re ready, I would like to introduce you. But if you don’t meet her before I die . . .”

  “You’re going to live forever, Miss Callie,” he says. “We all know that.”

  “I’ll live somewhere forever,” she says. “I’ll be with Jesus. And that’s why I really don’t care about this . . . this body of mine.”

  “What do you mean, Miss Callie?” His voice has lost its humorous edge.

  There’s a short pause, then she says, “This part is for Sydney.” Her tone changes then and gets slightly louder, as if she’s leaning toward the microphone. “Honey, I know you won’t want this, but I want my body donated to science.”

  Sydney sucks in a breath. “No!”

  “Science?” the pastor asks on the tape. “Why?”

  “Because I’ve never been a modest woman,” she says. “I’m not self-conscious like that. I don’t care if after I die people are staring at my . . . Oh, what do they call it? Cadaver? Or if they’re using a microscope to see things. They have to do research on somebody, don’t they?”

  “Well, yes, I guess they do.”

  “My daughter, Sydney’s mother, she died when Sydney was so small. Gloria had her whole life before her. They just didn’t know enough about the cancer she had. If someone had donated their body, maybe my girl could have been cured. Now I might have some things inside me that people might want to see and study.” She gives a slight giggle. “People have always told me I’m one of a kind.”

  The pastor chuckles, but Sydney is still in shock. I follow her lead.

  “I want to be useful for as long as I can,” Callie says.

  “Grammy!” Sydney whispers.

  The pastor’s voice on the tape is full of empathy. “That makes perfect sense, Miss Callie. So do you have any particular place you want your body donated?”

  “I’m thinking the medical college is as good as any. But honestly, I’m not particular. Just wherever my Sydney thinks is the best place. Wherever I can be most useful.”

  Sydney leans across the desk and stops the tape. “Wait. So . . . she didn’t want a casket? Or any funeral at all?”

  “You can still have a funeral,” Pastor Seagrove says. “In fact, try and stop us. We have to celebrate Miss Callie.”

  Sydney looks faint again. “I don’t know if I can donate her body.”

  “Of course you can. It’s what she wanted. We can do the funeral up big.”

  “But they could already be embalming her.”

  “I doubt it. Not until they’ve gotten signatures. I can call the funeral parlor as soon as we’re done here and let them know.”

  Swallowing, Sydney presses Play again.

  Miss Callie’s voice starts back up.
“You know, Sydney, that it won’t really be me in that body. Just a shell. I know people say that all the time, but I want you to know it’s true. I’ll be tickled to be with Jesus. We’ll be catching up. Well, I will. He knows all about me already, but I want to know every little thing that he’s done since he left this earth. I’m going to ask lots of questions.”

  Seagrove laughs as if he can see it. “Oh, I know you are.”

  “It’ll be so glorious. When I was a girl I went to camp, and we had a mountaintop experience every day. And then I came home and things got a little dull.” She chuckles again, and her voice lowers so that I picture the pastor leaning in. “I can just imagine heaven being a mountaintop experience every day . . . every hour, just as much as you can stand, till your heart just can’t hold anymore.”

  “I’m sure that’s how it is,” her pastor assures her.

  My eyes are full, and I look at Sydney. She’s not even trying to hide her tears now. And neither am I.

  CHAPTER 27

  Finn

  I accompany Sydney back to Callie’s house, and both of us walk through it in silence, looking around the place where we celebrated yesterday. The absence of the old woman is stark and brutal. We search the places where Callie might have put her will, opening drawers, thumbing through papers.

  Finally, Sydney locates it in a cabinet in Callie’s bedroom. She sits on Callie’s bed and unfolds the document.

  I wait inside the doorway, leaning against the dresser, giving her time and space to figure it out. After a few minutes, she blots her eyes and looks up at me.

  “She left me everything. The house, the bank account, everything. Oh, and her Bible. She made a special note that I was to get her Bible. It was like she set it apart from all the other stuff, like it was the most valuable thing she had.”

  I glance around the room and see it sitting on Callie’s bed table. I lift it reverently and take it to Sydney. I sit down on the bed next to her as she opens it.

  “Look. She wrote in it. All these notes.”

  “Now you’ll have to read it,” I say.

  Tears rush to her eyes again. “Yeah, I’ll do that.” She finds a Post-it note sticking on a page at the back, and she opens the Bible there, at Revelation 21. Callie’s notes and exclamations fill the ample margins.

  “Read it,” I whisper.

  “It’s about heaven,” Sydney says. She starts to read, and I close my eyes and try to imagine what the words mean. Heaven is a place I never thought much about, a place I just hoped existed. I don’t understand all of what I hear, but deep in my soul I hear the promise of no more tears or death or mourning or pain. She reads of the precious stones, the gates of pearl, and the illumination that’s not set off by the sun because there’s no need of one.

  By the time Sydney comes to the end, I realize I’m holding my breath. I let it out and look at the words as her finger moves under them. “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.” She looks up at me, her eyes packed full of the same kind of things I’m thinking. I nod for her to go on. She reads more, then comes to a point that hitches my heart. “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming quickly.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

  We’re quiet for a long moment as we stare at those words. “Look,” I say finally, pointing to Callie’s note on the side of the page.

  She’s written, “I’m coming home!! Can’t wait to see it!”

  Sydney covers her mouth and dissolves. “It’s like she really was excited to go.”

  “If you believe what she believed, I guess it would only stand to reason that you would be excited to get there.”

  We take a moment to read Callie’s small handwritten comments in the margins of the heaven chapters. I put my arm around Sydney as she thumbs through. It’s as if she’s sitting here with us, showing us things that thrill her.

  “What a gift,” I say when Sydney closes the book and holds it to her heart.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I think she had something there. It did need to be set apart. Grammy thought of everything.”

  “I hope this gives you a little more peace,” I say. “It sure does me.”

  I can see that her smile is genuine. “It does. It’s almost like Grammy was looking out for me even in death. Trying to make me feel better. Making me understand where she is.” She gets up and goes to Callie’s dresser and picks up her hairbrush. “It’s just that she was such a special lady. And now we’re going to have a funeral that’s more of a memorial service, and I doubt that many people will come. At her age, all of her friends must have died before her. What if nobody comes but the preacher?”

  “I’ll be there,” I say. “And I can guarantee you there’ll be others.”

  When I leave her there a little while later, I’m determined to make my promise come true. I’m going to get a crowd there for Callie. I’ll go to every person she dragged me to, everyone I know who knows her. I won’t take no for an answer.

  Callie Beecher is going to draw a crowd.

  CHAPTER 28

  Finn

  First, I head to the dry cleaners, not sure if it’ll even be open today, the day after Christmas. But when I get there, their Open sign is lit up.

  “May I help you?” the girl at the counter asks.

  “Can I see the manager, please?”

  She knocks on the door where Callie went to talk to him just days ago. It seems like so long ago now.

  The manager steps out and reaches across the counter to shake my hand. “Hey. Roger Jenkins,” he says.

  “Finn Parrish. I brought Callie Beecher here to talk to you the other day.”

  “Yeah, we love Miss Callie,” he says. “We’ve been doing business with her for years. Not so much lately, but we still like seeing her now and then.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I have bad news. Callie passed away yesterday in her sleep.”

  He gives the same old response. “On Christmas Day?”

  “That’s right,” I say. “I’m sorry to bring the news, but I wanted to let you know that the funeral is going to be at ten o’clock the day after tomorrow at the Greater Rivers Baptist Church. I wondered if you’d come.”

  “Of course I’ll be there.”

  “I want to make sure people come,” I say in case he’s just blowing smoke. “She has a granddaughter who cares a lot about her. I don’t want it to be one of those funerals. You know, the kind where only a handful of people are there. That would be sad.” I know I’m putting a guilt trip on him, twisting his arm, but I really don’t care. What I care about is Sydney and how she feels tomorrow.

  “Sure, yes, I’ll be there. I loved Miss Callie. We’re going to miss her.”

  I thank him and ask him to let the rest of the staff know, and to invite them to come. As I step to the door and push it open, he says, “Mr. Parrish?”

  I look back.

  “Now that I think about it, it’s kind of appropriate, don’t you think? Her passing away on Christmas Day? I think she would’ve liked that. That day was always real important to her.”

  “Yeah, it was. And I can tell you she had a real good Christmas before it happened.”

  “That’s good,” he says. “She deserved that.”

  I walk back out to the car and head to the bank where Callie talked to the branch manager. I do the same with him—force his agreement to show up at the funeral. Then I go to Macy’s, where she struck up a conversation with the girl behind the counter when she bought those plaid towels.

  I tell the girl about Callie, and even though she doesn’t know the name, she remembers her. “Look, I know this is a crazy request,” I say. “But Callie was a real special woman. And it means a lot to her granddaughter to give her a proper funeral. It would just be really great if you could come and bring some friends. I just want people to be there, you know?”

  “Sure,” she says. “I can
pack a pew.”

  I go back to the church. The pastor is out right now, but I talk to the secretary. “I was here this morning with Callie Beecher’s granddaughter?”

  “Yes, darlin’,” she says. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,” I say. “Would you make sure that everyone knows about Callie? If there’s an email list or people you could contact? The choir or the Sunday School?”

  “Absolutely,” she says. “I’ll let everybody know, I promise. We have a massive grapevine here. Don’t worry, we’ll turn out for our precious Callie.”

  Sitting behind the steering wheel, I try to think where else I can find people who might care about Callie. Her neighborhood! Of course. I drive there, park in her driveway, and walk from door to door up and down her block. Only half of them are home, but those who are know who Callie is and thank me for telling them about the funeral.

  When I get back to my car, I feel a sense of sadness that there isn’t more I can do. I don’t know who else to invite. As I drive home, I pray that God will work it out for Sydney. This whole praying thing gets easier every time I do it. I feel like I’m getting to know Callie’s Jesus a little better, even though I’m doing all the talking. But he speaks volumes in the way he listens.

  CHAPTER 29

  Sydney

  The funeral home asked for some pictures to enlarge for the funeral, so I go to Grammy’s house and get her boxes of photos and picture albums. I guess they’re mine now.

  I look around at all her stuff and wonder how I’m going to sort through eighty years of possessions. There’s so much of her here. I missed so much of her life, and I won’t recognize most of it.

  I’ll have to figure that out later.

  Back home, I spread the pictures out on my dining room table and page through the albums. There are faded black-and-white photos of Grammy when she was a young woman. I turn to a page where she’s holding a baby dressed in a frilly lace dress, all in white, with a sweet little bonnet. I look more closely and realize it’s my mom.