The Night Before Christmas

I emailed City of Hope and told them Clayton wanted to stop treatment. It was Christmas Eve. His mom called his dad but we held off on a wider announcement. I wanted people to have their Merry Christmas. We somehow made it through the day then gathered around Clayton’s hospital bed to read “The Night Before Christmas,” which had always been Clayton’s favorite ritual, curling up with Ceci and that tattered book from his childhood. He’d put on his actor voice and weave the tale, filling her dreams with candy-cane hopes and wishes.

That year, he couldn’t speak or read or even hold the book.

So it was my turn.

Cecilia crawled into bed with her daddy as I choked back emotion and turned the page. I could see in Clayton’s eyes that he remembered the poem so I read very slowly, prompting Ceci and Clayton to yell out the rhymes of each line:

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the………..HOUSE!

Not a creature was stirring not even a.................…MOUSE!

It was excruciating to read to my husband as if he were my child, to watch him garble the simplest of words. My brilliant husband. My witty and talented and articulate husband was gone and I wasn’t the only one destroyed by that. I looked over at his mother and saw her stoic devastation.

This was the end of her rituals too.  It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.