Resonant shadows

That's Buster, whom we managed to deck in a Santa cap for a quick pic back in 1997. His last Christmas with us was in 2000.

Saturday afternoon - sitting here watching Colorado State vs. Fresno State in the Arizona Bowl-not a prestige bowl but who cares! I've worked half the day outside and getting ready for various Christmas events (we gather over at Mom's tomorrow) and I'm enjoying a few moments of rest. Beautiful day if not very Christmassy - it's sunny and around 80 - all the windows open as well as the back door, since today I hung the door on the porch, finishing the screening project which will allow us to get those cats out from under us for part of the day. Ironically, Violet is the one who has fallen in love with the new space; she wandered down before lunch and hasn't left there yet. Getting a happy snootful of the big big world.

Beth will be pleased. Screening in the porch, she says, is her real Christmas present this year. I spent most of my vacation a few weeks ago painting the porch from top to bottom. Beth's over in Titusville today visiting a friend, so she'll come back to find her present finally delivered. I'm lucky to have someone who's so easily pleased ...

Violet and Belle check out the new screened porch.

This is the first Christmas without Timm, and the second for sister Molly without her son Nicholas, who died in an auto wreck in Feb. 2007 at the age of 23. (Molly's husband Jim also lost his father to blood cancer about six months later.) So the resonant shadows begin to creep in to our holiday table. Had things gone different in April, Timm might be visiting Florida for Christmas, maybe even staying here. Beth says he was the easiest houseguest we've ever had, so attentive and unobtrusive and helpful. Maybe by now he would have found another job to transition into after the end of Congresswoman Hooley's job. (Back in April, we were emaling back and forth about how to best scout out new opportunities.)

As Nicholas got older (and moved out on his own),he would make an appearance at Mom's Christmas Eve event, cell phone in tow, talking with the girl he so cared for, making plans for After. A typical young man. But Nicholas was a special guy too, in some ways very much like Timm , always so attentive and caring.

Jim and Molly with Nicholas in 1987.

Nicholas at my mother's Chrismas Eve event in 2004. The gift card was from Beth and I and it was to an auto parts store, something Nick was in infinite need of with his truck.

It was a very rainy that terrible night in February 2007 when Nicholas had his accident. He was staying over at his mother's place (Molly was his step-mom, though she raised him) and a half-sister had called after 1 a.m. to get picked up from a bar down on the south Orange Blossom Trail. His mother asked him to go pick her up and Nicholas didn't hesitate. He loaded into his girlfriend's SUV with her and his best friend and they took off. The car spun out on the Turnpike and crashed into a utility pole, killing all three at once.

Why did we have to lose the biggest hearts first? The question hangs heavy this Christmas season. I know there isn't any real answer to that, but it does make their absence especially difficult. Well, we'll do the best we can, celebrating the moment with who is still here, affirming the light and hope of Christmas with our smiles and ready appetites and gifts.

When we travel to Beth's parents' house on Christmas Day for that family's holiday celebration, the merriment hopefully will continue to improve. It's been nine years since Beth's nephew James died in a car wreck, and his mother and father and surviving brother seem to become more and more a part of the proceedings every year.

Beth's nephew James at a Boggs family Christmas event in 1998. He died the following January.

Today it's so fair and warm it's hard to get much sense that Christmas is just a few days away. (Of course, I hear that blizzard conditions are currently barreling down on the Northeast, so this feeling is surely limited our latitudes.) I can faintly hear Christmas carols floating up from the downtown-shopping district (at night so ablaze with Christmas lights that no snow or cold is required for proper effect). On the mantel of our fireplace there are a few Christmas cards - many are cutting back this year, it seems - both Mom and I have used Timm's pictures in Christmas cards I've designed; hers is up there. Soon I must wrap presents for tomorrow's event. So much yet to get done, so little time.

Had it made it here, and had he ended up staying with us, we would be heading out for a walk about this time, two tall, aging brothers who didn't spend much time together down the years but every time they got together it was like they had never separated. Talking about our worlds. Laughing a bit. Step by step identical in gait and weight. Our voices carved of the same baritone. Our interests peripheral to each other and yet, as I have found, reflections of the other, of the family we grew up in. A good family, if you ask me.

Timm's photo "Snowy Falls North," which I used on Christmas cards this year.