DECEMBER 25, 2019 – (excerpted from Inheritance – A Memoir) “Hey! You’re supposed to be asleep!” he said in an excited, half-whisper. “We [he always used the royal “we”] spent all day at Santa’s workshop. He asked about you and your sisters, and we said, ‘The sisters are all good little girls—but Eric—well, he’s a good little boy when he’s asleep!” Uncle Bruce let out a soft laugh.
I believed all his words and could readily picture every detail of his exchange with Santa. I worried, though, that in his attempt to humor Santa, Uncle Bruce had forgotten to impart critical information about what I wanted for Christmas. Uncle Bruce was known for forgetting things, little things, like where his wallet was or where he’d left his pen, and he and Mother and Dad would laugh about such occurrences and in those contexts, I would hear the word, “absent-minded.” I worried that Uncle Bruce had been ‘absent-minded’ when talking to Santa Claus.
But I needn’t have worried. “And then,” Uncle Bruce went on. “. . . and then! Santa introduced me to some of his elves, and they offered me tea and we sat down right there in the workshop and had a wonderful visit, and we got to tell them all about you and things that you wanted and they took notes and they said, ‘We’ll get right to work on Eric’s order!’”
Great relief swept over me, and close behind was a wave of admiration for Uncle Bruce, who, unlike my parents, had shown the will and the desire to go straight to Santa Claus, had the magic to gain access to Santa’s workshop and to meet him and his elves. No letters in the mail, no uncertain, non-committal, ‘I’ll see what we can pass on to Santa,’ but action, pure and simple. Action that took him straight to the source of all Christmas goodness.
After Uncle Bruce said, “Now it’s bedtime for you and time for me to eat some supper,” I plopped my head back down on my pillow. I stared up into the darkness and wondered, Why couldn’t Uncle Bruce, with the generous spirit move out to Minnesota and live near us, so that he could sustain Christmas for us year round?
Sadly, in his advanced years, Uncle Bruce would become selfish, self-absorbed, self-destructive, and insufferable. He shut us out of his life and slammed the door. There would be times when to save him from his own disasters, I would have to battle him to the point of rejection and estrangement. My initial reactions were anger and disgust. But when reflection gave me perspective, I was quite able to forgive our family’s reverse Ebenezer Scrooge. However much the ravages of age and eccentricity had turned him against us, he had shown us in our most impressionable years, true Christmas spirit—which lives strong and bright in each of us.
In the memory of Uncle Bruce’s warm and giving heart, I wish to each of my readers, a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
