Send the Cards

It was early in December this year, as I pulled out boxes of holiday greeting cards, surprised to find half boxes, and unopened boxes.  I’m reminded that the days of sending 40 or 50 cards to family and friends are long gone, just as many of those people are gone from this world. There are also those who no longer want the expense of mailing cards (over $3 in Canada for an international stamp does make you stop and think) and that makes me sad – it has become a lost art. I honour the wishes of those who have opted out and no longer send a card to those people, but I do write and send to family and friends I don’t see on a regular basis. I’ve always seen sending holiday wishes as a way of ending the year by saying “You are in my thoughts, and I hope life has been kind to you.” What arrives in my mailbox now is a trickle compared to what it once was.

I’ve never been in the practice of saving greeting cards with the exception of the few I’ve saved for my sons that were given to them by grandparents and their aunt. One day I hope when they inherit these treasure boxes that I’ve created for them they’ll have moments of happy memories when they see the things I’ve thought they might appreciate.

When I’m into January and putting all the holiday décor back into boxes for storage I collect the holiday cards, read them one more time and then they go into the recycling bin. However, there was one year that I kept a particular card that I simply couldn’t part with. I set it aside.

Many years ago, when we were all in the first flush of being adults, one of our friends, having earned his Engineering degree, purchased his dream car - a black Corvette which he eventually drove to Ohio as he began his career with a major chemical company. A “life of the party” guy, J, was missed at the usual gatherings but he kept in touch as often as possible. On one trip home he said he was finding it a bit lonely down there and asked me to compile a list of the books he should read that he probably hadn’t – and please list 50. So much laughter, so many glasses of wine, as we tried to decide which 50 books needed to be on that list. One of the last questions he asked me on that trip as he was heading out the door, was “what is mead, anyway?” – I recall the question, but not why he asked.

One December a few years later, I can’t recall how many now as time has a way of blurring, a Christmas card arrived. The image on the front was not the usual funny type that J would choose to send.  This one was very Victorian, very nostalgic with an image of a group of children. They might have been siblings, but I like to think it was a group of friends, working to build a snowman.

A week after that card arrived a phone call came from someone in our group – incoherent and sobbing that he’d been phoned by someone else in our circle – J was in hospital having suffered what might have been a stroke or a ruptured brain aneurysm. We went on a wait and watch only to be told a day later that J had died.

J’s funeral was held here at home on a very cold, snowy day just before Christmas. The men in the circle were his pallbearers; the women wept for a life gone much too soon. Afterwards and many drinks in as we toasted his life, we thought about how much living J had done in that short life. And how so many of the things he said to us, or did for us, had left a lasting impact.

That January, I kept the card he’d sent and found a suitable frame. I put it away with all the other holiday décor. It is the first item I take out of the storage bins every year and find a pride of place for it to remember not just his life but all that he meant to so many people. I have it on my desk right now as I’m writing this.

The choice of that card was intentional, even if J didn’t know it at the time. Or maybe he did. Maybe he had a sense that time was short and he needed to leave a message for us all.

This is the reason I continue to send a Christmas card to everyone in my life who still holds so much space in my heart. We never know when it might be the last “you are in my thoughts and I love you.”