Christmas in Cape Breton

Sometimes a photo is more than just a photo. This is one of those times.

As someone who writes a daily blog, it is my job to put the feelings I possess into words. For most of the year, my work focuses on the world of music and manifests itself in the form of blog posts about the stories behind many of the songs that form the soundtrack of our lives. In some of those posts I share stories from my life as a husband and father, as a school teacher and/or as a child growing up on the island of Cape Breton in the province of Nova Scotia. Regular readers of my words should have a fair idea of the type of values I possess based upon the personal connections I make to the world of musical creativity. However, if you are new to my blog, please allow the following story to fill in some of the blank spaces for you. This post is about what Christmas means in Cape Breton. For me, it is what I believe the true essence of Christmas to be and why I believe that Christmas time is the best part of the entire year. Get out your milk and cookies and let me tell you a story about some little old ladies who have got it going on at Christmas time.

My mother is 92 years old as I type these words. She is a healthy person who scoots around in her wheelchair at the nursing home where she lives as if she was a Formula One race car driver. She goes everywhere allowable and does everything she is invited to partake in yet she remembers almost none of it at all. She still remembers that I am her son. Sometimes she remembers the name of my wife. My daughters are simply referred to as “the girls” but she remembers enough to know that they are growing up and that “Nanna loves them”. The staff at the nursing home where she lives refer to her as a pleasant dementia patient. That label does not surprise me as my mother has always been a kind, caring and generous person throughout her life. She has always been well-regarded by those who came to know her. Everyone considers her to be a good person and a true friend.

Before moving into the nursing home this past Spring, my mother spent the previous ten years of her life living in an assisted living retirement complex. An assisted living lifestyle is one in which residents have their own apartments and spend the day as they see fit. However, their meals are prepared for them, a nurse visits them daily or weekly as needed, housekeeping services are provided and so on. It is independent living but with assistance. While at her assisted living complex, my mother made many new friends. Visiting her on my own or with my own family usually meant visiting with my mom’s extended assisted living community of friends as well. That was ok. If you can imagine what it would feel like to be taken into the warm embrace of an entire building filled with grandmothers then you might have some idea of what the atmosphere was like whenever I/we came home. Not only was it nice to be welcomed so warmly, it was also nice to see how popular my mother was and how so many people valued her for who she was.

Needless to say, these same grandmothers who cared about my mother so much were also well aware that dementia was slowly encroaching on her mind. They were all very protective of her when it came to making sure she remembered to come to dinner in the dining room or to put out her garbage on trash day. They were also very quick to pull me aside for hushed conversations whenever I came home. They were worried about how long my mother was going to be able to safely stay in their midst. One of the things that you come to know if you are living in a retirement complex of any sort is that people come and go as their health inevitably declines. But because my mother had been there for almost a full decade, she was viewed as a fixture in the building. Thus, when the time came one day that she fell and broke her hip, the fact that she was taken away by ambulance and never came back (because of how far her dementia had progressed) shook those who remained behind.

When the doctors informed us that my mother required permanent care and could not ever go back to her assisted living complex, it necessitated a trip down to deal with her belongings and clear out her apartment. I took my youngest daughter Sophie with me. She is an excellent worker and organizer and I knew she would be a big help. For eleven consecutive days we worked our way through every closest, dresser drawer and cupboard. We quickly learned a lot about how my mother viewed the world based upon the things she held on to as she aged. Almost all of it dealt with her relationships with the people in her life. We found birth announcements and obituaries, marriage licenses and death certificates, Christmas cards, pictures drawn by my girls when they were toddlers, newspaper articles about some of the good things that happened to Cape Breton over the years and on and on it went. All of it was uplifting and positive and came from her heart or else was something that had touched her heart. If this story only involved the things that Sophie and I found while performing our familial duties then it still would have been enough of a memory to have lasted us a lifetime. But there was more and better things to come.

We didn’t toil away in isolation. When word spread that “Tommy and Sophie” were down to clean out the apartment, the league of grandmothers sprang into action. One by one, they stopped by to say hello and introduce themselves to Sophie. As each lady darkened our door, they made sure to tell Sophie about who her grandmother was, some of the ways that she made a difference in their life and how lucky they all were to have known her. For Sophie, who only really knew her Nanna as an old lady that she saw once or twice a year, the gift of this information was priceless. It went a long way toward helping her develop a richer, more realistic picture of who her Nanna was. As the days went by, Sophie began to even recognize some aspects of her own personality as being connected with my mother. I do believe that her teenage heart grew as a result.

While there were many grandmothers who took the time to stop by the apartment as we worked, there was one lady with whom Sophie formed a special bond. That lady was the person who lived across the hall from my mother. Her name was Stella. Stella was one of the ladies with whom my mother spent the most time. They visited every day; chatting away about family and past memories, watching TV together and sharing a cup of tea or two as well. It was Stella, along with another grandmother on the same floor, who found my mother the day she fell and broke her hip. It was Stella who came to us in tears that first day we were down, apologizing for not having found my mother sooner and for having done more for her before her final day at the assisted living complex arrived. Stella was a great friend to my mother for a number of years. She needn’t have apologized for anything. Her friendship with my mother was a priceless treasure. The entire time that Sophie and I worked, Stella would come over and offer us a cool treat or a drink. We declined most of the time but some times we would stop what we were doing and have a visit with her in her apartment. That made her feel important. It made Sophie feel special to be doted upon by a grandmotherly figure such as Stella. A new friendship blossomed before my very eyes. Stella and Sophie have since become penpals. She just received a letter from Stella last week (as I write these words).

As Sophie and I worked away, we often had to make decisions as to what to do with various possessions that we came across. While we donated many to charities in the area and trashed a lot more (including using a shredding machine to destroy any documents that contained account numbers or personal information), we also thought that some of the grandmothers who knew my mother might want something of hers to help remember her by. For many, that meant receiving a small doll, as my mother was a doll collector and loved her dolls almost as much as she loved her family. One lady asked for her electric kettle because she associated knowing my mom with having good hot tea. One lady asked for the rocking chair that she always saw my mother sitting in. To everyone who asked, we gave them something that we felt they would appreciate. Stella asked for nothing. Sophie and I decided that we weren’t going to leave a grieving friend without anything. In time, we knew what we wanted to do.

My mother loved Christmas. As children, my sister and I grew up in a house with the smell of pine Christmas trees and baked goods wafting through our home. There were candles in the windows, tinsel on the tree and a mountain of gifts for us to open on Christmas Day. Friends and family came to call and invited us to come to their homes as well. Carols played. We went to church. And every day Christmas cards came in the mail. We always had over one hundred festive cards hung on lengths of string or else taped to the walls of our living room for all to see when they visited us. Most of all, I remember the feeling of warmth and togetherness that seemed extra intense at Christmas time. I feel soooooo lucky to have grown up in this atmosphere.

Not surprisingly, my mother loved collecting Christmas ornaments. About one hour from our home in the village of St. Peters there used to exist a store that sold Christmas merchandise all year round. My mother loved that store. One of her proudest purchases from the Christmas Store in St. Peters was a set of ceramic figurines. One was a set of snow people, all decked out in sky blue scarves and toques. The other was a couple: Santa and Mrs. Claus. For the last thirty or forty years of her life, my mother took those ceramic figurines with her everywhere she lived, including when she moved into her assisted living complex. All ten years of her stay there saw those figurines brought out of closets and displayed for everyone to see at Christmas time. Even as her world shrank as she aged, it was figurines such as those that connected her to her past, when life was full and she was truly independent. So as Sophie and I came across those figurines and I shared their significance with her, we both knew what it was that we were going to give to Stella.

Stella, too, knew what Santa and Mrs. Claus meant to my mother and was almost too overwhelmed to accept them but in the end she did. She promised to take them out and display them every Christmas that she was able to do so going forward. Last night I received an email from her daughter who had stopped by for a visit. Included in that email was the photo you see at the top of this post. Those figurines at the foot of that Christmas tree are the ones that used to belong to my mother. This tree is located in the main foyer of the assisted living complex. The chairs around the tree are where many of the grandmothers would gather mid-afternoon to discuss the events of the day. By placing Santa and Mrs. Claus there, Stella has ensured that my mother is remembered by those who were her friends for so many years.

Memories are wonderful things at times. I have promised Stella and her daughter that I will show my own mother that photo when I come down to see her this week. I braced them for the fact that I cannot guarantee that my mother will understand what she is looking at. But even though dementia is a cruel disease, I am still willing to bet that seeing Santa and Mrs Claus will bring a smile to her face. The magic of Christmas remains real…at least for one more year. While I am home I will stop in and visit with the grandmothers at the assisted living complex and I will stop in to see Stella personally and pass on the Christmas card that Sophie is working on as you read these words.

When I try to describe what it was like to grow up in Cape Breton at Christmas time, this story is as close as I can get to showing it to you. No gifts were exchanged, only gestures of love and kindness and remembrance. That spirit of doing for others is fully present in this act by Stella and the others. My mom will probably never know what Stella and her friends have done in her honour but she will feel that love through the fog of her mind I guarantee it. The grandmothers will feel better for having engaged in an act of compassion and humanity for a kind soul who could use a heartfelt hug. So even though my childhood tree was always crammed with gifts and my stocking was always full, the thing that I always, always, always remember most about Christmas in Cape Breton was the love. Always the love.

NOTE: Today’s post is the one you just read. Tomorrow and Wednesday I will have new holiday-themed music posts. Thursday and Friday I will be with my mother for an early Christmas visit so no posts on those days. I will be back and ready to create new music posts to lead everyone into the holidays the next Monday.