I didn’t expect to outlive my whole family.
I truly believed I would go first. My husband, Harold, used to tease me about it. He would grin and say, “If you throw away my Tupperware before I’m cold in the ground, I’ll come back and haunt you.” I would laugh and tell him I’d leave it right where it was just to keep the peace.
That’s what sixty years of marriage gives you. It gives you the strange gift of joking about endings, because you believe you’ll face them together.
But I didn’t.
Harold passed away quietly one September morning. He was sitting at the kitchen table, halfway through his crossword puzzle, pencil still in his hand. There was no warning. No drama. Just silence where his breathing should have been.
And then, as if that wasn’t enough, my daughter Marianne and my grandson Tommy were taken too.
Ten days before Christmas.
A drunk driver ran a red light.
They had been on their way home from holiday shopping, laughing and talking about eggnog and how Tommy wanted to build his gingerbread house early this year. Marianne had promised to let him use extra candy “just this once.”
A drunk driver ran a red light, and just like that, my house became unbearably quiet.
My name is Mabel. I am eighty-three years old, and this December I found myself staring at walls that had seen more joy than I would ever know again.
I couldn’t bring myself to put up the big Christmas tree. The tall one Harold and I used every year, the one that took two of us to lift and always leaned a little to the left. I just couldn’t face it.
But I still had Harold’s little evergreen. A small potted tree we’d kept near the back garden for years. It was never meant to be a Christmas tree, but somehow it had become one.
I dragged it to the front porch and wrapped it in soft yellow lights.
I decorated it slowly. I didn’t rush. I used Marianne’s hand-painted wooden angels, each one a little different. I used Tommy’s glitter-covered stars from two years ago, the ones that still shed sparkles everywhere. And at the very top, I placed Harold’s carved wooden dove, something he’d made back in the 1970s.
I couldn’t bring myself to put up the big tree.
My hands shook as I worked. My heart hurt in a way I didn’t know was possible. I whispered to each ornament as if they might still hear me.
“You’re still with me, my love,” I murmured to Harold’s dove.
“I miss you, my Marianne. I miss everything about you, my girl.”
Then my voice broke as I held one of Tommy’s stars. “Oh, Tommy… Grandmama can’t wait to see you again.”
The first night I turned the lights on, I cried quietly into my cup of tea. But for a small, flickering moment, the house didn’t feel so empty.
I whispered to each one like they might still hear me.
That peace didn’t last long.
The next evening, I was sitting by the window when I heard his voice. Mr. Hawthorn’s voice. Sharp and cold, cutting through the air like the wind itself.
“Your tree’s too bright! It’s keeping me awake, Mabel!”
Mr. Hawthorn was my neighbor across the street. A grumpy man who chased birds away and never waved back.
I set my mug down and stepped outside, careful not to trip over the extension cord. He stood in his driveway, arms crossed tight against his chest, staring at my tree like it had personally offended him.
“I can move it,” I said gently. “Or dim the bulbs if that helps.”
He grunted.
“I have to work in the morning,” he muttered. “I don’t need some spotlight flashing in my window.”
Before I could answer, he turned and slammed his door.
I moved the tree two feet to the left. I added a thin screen. I turned the lights to their lowest setting.
“I don’t need some damn spotlight flashing in my window.”
That should have been enough.
But then I noticed him again a few nights later. Just standing on his porch, arms folded, staring at the tree. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move.
For a moment, I wondered if I was imagining things. Maybe he was just curious.
Still, I filled the kettle and took out two mugs.
Habit, I guess.
A few days later, just after dusk, there was a soft knock at my door. When I opened it, Mr. Hawthorn stood there, bundled in a thick coat.
“I measured the angle,” he said. “Your lights still reflect off my window.”
“They’re only on for a few hours,” I replied.
“People should respect peace,” he muttered. “And boundaries.”
Then he left without another word.
That week, one of the ornaments fell. Marianne’s wooden angel. I found it face down on the ground, one wing snapped clean off.
At first, I blamed the wind. But then I noticed the soil in the pot was disturbed, uneven, like someone had kicked it.
Later that day, my neighbor Carol came by with soup.
“Everything alright with Hawthorn?” she asked. “I saw him stomping over the other day.”
“He’s not fond of the lights,” I said quietly.
Carol scoffed. “He leaves his own porch lights on all night. What is he guarding? Fort Knox?”
She softened then. “Be careful, Mabel. People forget how to be human when they’ve been bitter too long.”
That night, I left the lights off. I sat in the dark, wrapped in Harold’s old navy cardigan, drinking cold tea.
Then came the coldest night of the year.
I was outside adjusting an ornament when I heard tires screech.
Headlights flashed.
An SUV rounded the corner too fast.
“No! Stop! That’s my tree!” I screamed.
He didn’t stop.
The car crushed the pot, shattered the ornaments, dragged the lights through the snow.
Mr. Hawthorn reversed and drove away.
I dropped to my knees, staring at broken glass, snapped wood, and glitter scattered like fallen stars.
I didn’t sleep that night.
By morning, I decided to take everything down.
Then there was a knock.
It was Ellie, Carol’s granddaughter.
“I saw what happened,” she said softly. “I took a video.”
That night, she posted it online.
By morning, kindness arrived at my door.
A box with a note: “In memory of our daughter.”
A small tree with a tag: “To start again, Mabel. If you want to.”
Two days before Christmas, I opened my door and gasped.
A new tree stood where the old one had been. Taller. Crooked. Beautiful.
One ornament hung at the top. Pale blue glass. One word painted on it:
Family.
From the street, Carol smiled. Ellie waved.
Then Mr. Hawthorn stepped forward.
His eyes were tired.
“I didn’t mean for it to go that far,” he said.
“It does matter,” I replied. “Everything matters.”
He nodded. “Merry Christmas, Mabel.”
That night, I wrapped Harold’s cardigan tighter and watched the lights glow.
“They remembered me,” I whispered. “And they see me.”
And for the first time in a long while, I remembered myself too.