Oniontown Pastoral: Christmas Beneath Kathy’s Stars

The thought arrived when I was resting under the stars—not constellations or planets impersonating distant suns, but wife Kathy’s stars, just three of them. My late mother might have accused them of being loud. I would say gaudy. Anyway, they’re eighteen inches tip to tip and made of sturdy paper. A light bulb inside sets their colors and curves aglow. Think paisley and speckles. Who cares what anybody else calls them? Kathy calls them fun. Orange, purple, shades that have no names.

They hang from the ceiling of the porch enclosed by our home’s previous owner, Mr. Tyler, in 1964. The walls are lavender, painted thus to bestow easy joy. My wife composed a room for escape in this age of upset and absurdity and has more than succeeded. On one side sits her dresser and an old library table for days she works from home. On the other side, a recliner welcomes the weary to stargaze.

Eighteen months ago, Kathy’s mother moved into the lavender room to die. There’s no other way to say it. Sometimes a nursing home is the only option, but the Coleman family could spare the time and space for a vigil. In went a hospital bed, oxygen machine and television to supply Edna with the endless Westerns she regarded as good company.

Intimate care was required, which Kathy and daughter Elena provided with unhurried grace. Most importantly, a confused call into the twilight would bring a fast answer: “We’re with you, Mom. You’re home with us.”

My wife and mother-in-law shared a hot fudge sundae as the hours grew thin. Across the room, Chuck Connors and his Winchester sent some poor slow-hand Jesus’ way.

During the day, Edna was all there. I’ll take to my own grave the morning she looked into my eyes as if to say, “Is this it? Is this the end, John?” We were holding hands.

I called for Kathy. She whispered what the dying deserve to hear: “We love you. You’re not alone.”

I say again, the room was lavender. Outside, breezes played the windchimes. The passing was as peaceful as any I’ve seen.

When the undertaker arrived, I accompanied Edna—zipped up in a plastic sleeve—from porch to hearse. I’ve learned to accompany the dead and breathe. This was June 7, 2023. Twenty-five years before on June 8^th, sepsis took my own mother away. Would that I had been there to hold her hand.

A week ago—before the Twelve Days of Christmas had expired—I breathed under Kathy’s heavens, all lights turned off except the three stars, and thought of my mother-in-law and mother, Dolly. The memories ached a little but weren’t mournful. They sang mezzo piano of hope.

Some might call the Colemans lax, but we refuse to rush our creche and decorations to the attic because the calendar says so. Until Balthasar, Melchior, and Gaspar arrive from the East, the corner of Parkway and Fourth remains festive and aglow.

In this place, then, surrounded by soft, healing colors, the truths that Christmas conceals under our trees behind the presents and hangs hidden up our flues showed themselves to me. In sacred story, the Christ Child is born. But then, everybody is born. This is the only way to be somebody. In time, the holy child grew up and died. The same goes for us all.

In Kathy’s lavender room, where Edna’s brow drew down in apprehension—“Is this the end, John?”—realities that can’t be escaped, that no bargaining can forestall, settled upon me.

We’re born, we die. Should I have grieved this commonplace epiphany? I did, a little, but mostly I felt blessed as if by an afghan like ones my mother’s generation draped over the backs of their davenports. I took in Kathy’s stars one at a time and received hope. There’s no other way to say it.

I’m a Lutheran pastor. Maybe I should preach to you. Forgive me. What was written upon mine heart a week ago beneath Kathy’s firmament—where I imagined Dolly Coleman’s last glance into eternity without my hand to hold—wasn’t a sermon, but a confession.

Friends, call me Thomas, the disciple whose doubts yielded only to a miracle. Such are mine. At the same time, my hopes would bring you to tears, if I could find good words to tell you about them.

Oh, Edna, I was glad to walk beside you at the last. Can you still see the stars?

Mom, you had the gentlest hands. May they reach into forever and may forever take hold of them.