We got to my parents’ around 10:00 a.m. to find the room littered with presents, all for Iris. Presents on the floor, presents on the table, presents on the sofa, presents in the kitchen. Wrapped presents, presents in gift bags, presents in envelopes. Presents everywhere. We tried to do the whole happy Christmas morning song and dance for her benefit, but it was hard to muster the strength. Especially for Harris. He tried to participate but was still so sick from detox and had to go back to bed within minutes.
After Iris opened the last of her presents and scraps of wrapping paper coated the floor of the living room, I found a check for $6,000 sitting on the kitchen counter, folded up in a piece of scrap paper from a Houston SPCA notepad. On the bottom of the page sat a picture of a dog and cat playing with a blue ball of yarn. Scribbled in pencil on the back of the paper was a note that read:
Sorry for no card.
I’ve been going through stuff if you haven’t noticed.
Anyways.
Here is to being besties again.
Hope this helps with Iris in some way.
Love you
—Brother
Only a couple days earlier I’d been complaining about the burden of Iris’s hearing aids not being covered by insurance and having to pay up to $6,000 out of pocket when her loaner pair expires. My stress was apparent. Even with all the shit he’d been going through, Harris still managed to hear me. He still managed to come through and save the day. I was so grateful. I couldn’t do these sorts of things for him. We got him a gift card to Chili’s. I mean, he loved Chili’s, but it was no $6,000.
31 Ten Months, Five Days
It’s our first Christmas without you.
How did we get from there to here? Last Christmas Eve, you were home. You were alive. You were detoxing. It was agony, but you were here.
The Christmas Eve before, I was eight months pregnant. A world of promise curled up inside my belly. Mike brought home a key lime pie, my favorite. We ate it together on the sofa, right out of the box with two forks.
The Christmas Eve before that, Mike proposed to me in bed in the middle of the night, one year to the minute after we’d met. It was as joyous a moment as I’ve known.
Ten years ago, our family was making s’mores by the fireplace in our childhood home. We stuck marshmallows on unfurled wire coat hangers. We let them catch fire. Our overweight cocker spaniel, Buster, kept stealing them off the table as they cooled.
This Christmas Eve, you are dead. Permanently and forever gone.
Once it gets dark, we drive around and look at Christmas lights, as we do every year. Iris, Mom, and Dad are in the back seat. Mike drives. I sit in the passenger seat. Iris is on the hunt for Santa Claus, or “Kiki Cause,” as she calls him. She keeps shouting, “Bapa! Where Kiki Cause?!” Dad tells her to keep her eyes peeled. He said the same thing to us when we were little.
We drive slowly around the mansion-clad neighborhood of River Oaks with the windows rolled down, since it’s eighty degrees in Houston. We see sprawling trees dripping with twinkling lights, inflatable Santas and snowmen, and nativity scenes. We sing “Jingle Bells” and “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer.”
At some point, Dad quietly says, “We used to drive over here every Christmas Eve to look at these lights.” The car goes silent. And the silence says what it always says: Harris should be here. It’s the same sound the fireworks made on our first Fourth of July without you. As we watched the epic fireworks show from Mom and Dad’s balcony, Mom grabbed me by the waist and held on tight. Every exploding mass of light whispered Harris, and we both heard it.
There’s no way to tune it out. It’s a frequency that’s always ringing in our ears.
Christmas Day is even worse. It knocks me down, drags me out by my hair, and leaves me dismembered all over again.
Iris wakes up at 5:55 a.m., but I’ve been awake for the last half hour, lying in bed, thinking about Christmas mornings when we were kids. I remember getting one of those little red and yellow Cozy Coupe cars one year and you and I taking turns riding it up and down our block. When I was six, we got our cocker spaniel. You wanted to name him Ghostbuster. I threw a fit, so Dad used it as an opportunity to teach us about compromise: we settled on Buster. He lived until he was sixteen. I was a junior in college. His death was really hard on you. We loved that dog.
I turn off the baby monitor, throw on my robe, and walk down the hall to Iris’s room. I lift her out of her crib, and she wraps her little arms tightly around my neck. It’s the best part of my day. We sit in the big rocking chair where she lays on my lap with her head nestled against my chest. We rock back and forth as she slowly wakes up. After a few quiet moments, she pops up, looks at me, and starts giggling. I giggle back. She giggles back. This goes on for several rounds.
“Light,” she says and points to the lamp. I turn it on. Our eyes squint to adjust.
“Iris, guess who you’re gonna see today?”
“Ummm…”
“Santa Claus!”
“He ’cary.”
“No, he’s not scary. He is a nice man who brings presents to good little boys and girls. Are you a good girl?”
“Yeah!”
“Well,
