The Christmas Box.(Kevin Hughes) It sat on the table every Christmas Season. Just like it had since way back in 2004. Unopened.

Debbie didn’t want to open it. The Box had come the day before Christmas in 2004 just two days after her husband had come home from the war. His box was draped with a flag. The box he sent was wrapped with silver and gold, the box he lay in, held a Silver Star, A Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart.

Her heart, a heart that had held so much love, so much happiness, so much future in it, filled with bitterness the day she lowered the box with him in it into the ground. The Box he sent placed under the tree with care. It went unopened then and was still unopened now in 2017.

It was Christmas Eve, and Debbie sat alone in the Dark. She sipped her wine, no longer guzzling it in an effort to wash the bitterness out of her heart. She had gone down that road for a year or more; they were right. The answer doesn’t lay in the bottom of a bottle, neither does relief from grief. It doesn’t matter how much wine you drink, you can’t wash the bitterness from your heart.

She learned to go on, even to laugh. Her laugh was hollow though, and only Veterans, Old People, and those that have lost someone they loved heard the echo in her laugh. She hadn’t had a single real laugh since he died in that Godforsaken War. At that thought a bitter smile laced her face, etched in grief and questioning: “Isn’t all war God forsaken, either by Him, or by us?” As usual, there was no answer.

And so she sat, alone in the dark. No tree to keep her company, or lights to glitter in the darkness. Just the box he sent placed carefully on the table under his picture. It was the only Christmas decoration in her home and she was the only one there to see it. It still shone with its silver and gold paper, a sprig of pretty green mistletoe complete with berries. Her eyes grew shiny, not enough to tear, she had shed so many of those on hundreds of lonely nights, that shiny had replaced wetness in her eyes. The mistletoe though, brought back the softness of his lips and the shiny to her eyes.

And so she sat until she dozed off.

She squirmed to see what felt so sharp edged on her lap. Maybe it was a dream, or perhaps the edge of her glass had been ground into her lap as she dozed. As soon as she realized what it was, she was awake, alert, amazed. It was the box sitting on her lap, her one hand with the wine glass limp and timid on top of it, her other hand loosely draped over the edge of the rocker.

Luckily, the startle that brought her to instant wakefulness did not cause her to drop the box, or even spill the wine. Her mind was awhirl. It was a good ten feet to the table from where she sat. Her wine glass was still half full, and a half a glass of wine (she knew from long experience) was not enough to either put her to sleep or fog her memory.

“How in the hell did you get on my lap, little box?”

She spoke to it as you might a new puppy, or a tiny kitten, or a newborn child- innocent of any blame, to precious to accuse, and to cute to let go of.

The box, of course, said nothing.

She placed her wine glass on the floor next to her rocker- being careful as she bent over to not bother the box or damage it in any way. As she straightened back up, she noticed that the lights were on too.

“When did that happen? I know it was dark when I dozed off.”

She was still pondering this latest mystery piled onto of the mysterious route the box took to her lap, when she noticed the tag nestled in the Sprig of Mistletoe.

She had put that box out on the table every single Christmas since he died- except for that first Christmas where she naively placed it under the tree expecting it to comfort her. It didn’t. Its presence there a marked reminder that he wasn’t present to give it to her. Every year after that, she had no tree, no decorations, no wreathes, just the box on a bare table. Everything Christmas she buried with him.

Her mind froze. There wasn’t any other way to describe it. The label was written by him. It was his crazy chicken scratch scribble on that tag. Her mind froze, her breathing stopped, and her heart almost forgot to do its job- it was his writing all right. She always used to tease him that he only knew how to write the first letter of every word in bold flowing cursive, after that, it was up to Doctors and Pharmacist to decide what any of the other letters might be.

Yet, there it was. She could make out the first letter of every word, and because she had read so many letters from him in the past, with a little effort and much recall of an old skill the rest of the letters separated themselves into whole words. She read the tag out loud afraid it would crumble in her hands.

To: Deb, with all my love, Marry Christmas, Jay

She laughed. A soft burst of air, but definitely a laugh. It wasn’t a misspelling of “Merry” but Jay’s way of saying that marrying Debbie had made every day a “Marry Christmas.” It is why they had married on Christmas Day, and that brought the first real smile, pleasant memory, and twinkle to her eyes in more than a decade.

Oh, boy, did she remember the kerfunkle about their decision to get married on Christmas Day- even Father O’Hara, normally the most easy to get along with human being she had ever met, was hesitant to marry them on Christmas Day. A bribe of a few bottles of wine, and the promise of a new roof for the Chapel won him over. Her mother and Jay’s mother took a lot more than that.

She leaned back in the rocker as memories of that wonderful wedding day flooded her heart, washing bitterness away, breaking off chunks of walled off feelings and tumbling those down and out of her soul. It was cleansing flood of forgotten feelings that rushed to fill her heart before the bitterness could try and creep back in.

She could still see him, so tall, so strong, so handsome. His dress Uniform hung on him like a recruiting poster maker’s dream. She could still remember coming down the stairs in her wedding dress, the same dress that her Mother, her Grandmother, and her two sisters had worn at their weddings. And that brought a momentary detour down memory lane…only to slam to a stop.

“Oh.My.God.”

And now the tears did fall. Tears of shame, guilt, selfishness, denial now apparent to her. For her Mom was also a War Widow, as was her Grandmother. World War Two claimed her Grandfather, Vietnam her Father, and Iraq claimed her Jay. She felt small knowing those women had all been where she was now, and she never reached out to them. A small determined thought balled into a tight knot in her head: “Tomorrow is Christmas, and I will go to see all of them. Thank them. And beg forgiveness.”

Her heart shed the last of her bitterness along with most of the past 13 years. The shell had broken, emptied, and now was filling rapidly with both the present and a future.

She looked back down at the tag, still held in a gentle caress as her two fingers stroked the letters Jay had written so long ago. She read the tag again, her gaze lingering over the two words: “Marry Christmas.”

She got up slowly, put the box back on the table, gave it a soft loving pat, and reached for her phone. She had some calls to make, some people to see, and a life to live.

“Oh, Jay, thank you for the beautiful gift, whatever it is.”

She didn’t know if he could hear her. She hoped he could. It wasn’t the gift he expected to give, she was sure of that. It was that simple tag with that short sentiment: To Deb, with all my love, Marry Christmas- that was the gift that opened her heart.

She was loved, she did marry, and life is a gift all of its own. She knew that now.

When her two children asked her- thirty years in the future, why she never opened that silver and gold box, she would smile in a way that made the Mona Lisa feel threatened.

“That box was given to me a long time ago, way before I met your father. I shall wait to open it with the man who gave it to me.”

And she did just that.

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