Christmas past and my sister

Did you ever have a flashback or virtual type memory come out of nowhere and hit you so strong it sent you to your knees?  It was so vivid that you could actually smell the aromas and hear the audio sounds occurring in that moment? Today, while I was writing a ghost piece, (pieces of content people buy from you and use as their own,) I was sipping a cup of Gevalia coffee and all of a sudden I was standing at the candy counter in Sears and Roebuck and I was 9 years old again.

It was Christmas time, yes I said Christmas time, it is my flashback and I will describe as I remember it.  Politically correct be damned.  It was Christmas time and this is my Christmas memory.

We were all there, right there in the moment, my whole family with Christmas music blaring from the store speakers of Sears and Roebuck.  It was my father, my mother, my older sister Debbie, my younger sister Christine and my brother Bobby.  We were Christmas shopping, at least my parents were.  This particular Sears and Roebucks was located in Bayshore, New York which is on Long Island. Not sure why I feel that is important, I just do.

Right after Halloween every year, we would be handed the Sears Catalog (Christmas Wishes Book) and told we could pick one item.  My mother would order the items out of the catalog and pick them up at the store.  When you have 4 children, you try NOT to spend a lot of time in stores but sometimes you must and this was one of those times. If we were good, our Dad told us he would treat us to candy or nuts from the Candy Department.  It always smelled so good over there.

I remember being told to take our little sister and go stand at the Candy Counter and our parents would be there in a few minutes.  Bobby was really little so they kept him with them.

We did what we were told.  Back then you could walk away from your parents without being kidnapped.  After all  who would want to kidnap a party of 3 kids, ages 10, 9 and 6?

What we didn’t know at the time was that our parents were picking up our Christmas presents and sneaking them out into the trunk of the car.  They were also picking up additional presents and they did that by one parent staying with us while the other ran off and shopped in a hurry.

These Christmas time excursions happened in the early 1970’s.  We were a happy normal middle class American family.  You know the kind you have seen on TV shows.

Anyhow, I am getting off track here.  You see I was trying to draw the picture for you so you could see us standing there in front of the candy/nut counter in the Sears & Roebuck (now it’s just Sears) with our mouths watering trying to decide what we were going to pick because we were being good and Dad was going to buy us a treat.

We had our noses pressed up against the glass looking in on all the nuts and candy on the other side, our breath steaming up the glass.  

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When she was handed that paper bag with her pound of nuts in it, she put it right inside her winter jacket for safe keeping.  Sometime later that evening I saw her snacking on them while reading one of her Nancy Drew mystery books.

She is gone now; she went to heaven to be with our father and our grandmother.  She is and continues to be my hero who fought cancer for near 12 years and finally said, “ENOUGH.”  She actually said that to me. “ENOUGH.”  I will never forget that.  She had had ENOUGH.

It is almost 2 years now that she has been gone and I am finding myself thinking about her a lot right now.  I felt her presence around me the first 3 months and then that feeling faded.  She has been back with me the last few days and today when I had that flash back, vivid memory or whatever someone might call it, she was smiling and all pink and happy.  She was excited about Christmas and she was part of a happy family.

I think she knows we need her right now so she is making house calls.  I do believe you have to be receptive to these kinds of things for them to happen to you. I am receptive.

She and I discussed all this when she had made the decision to stop trying to get more treatments and not look for any other clinical trials.  She told me she would be back.  She told me she would visit.  She told me she would be a ladybug on my shoulder and that has happened several times.

Thank you for the memory dear sister.  Thank you for the visit.  Did I say she picked pistachio nuts?  Oh yes, I did.  Pistachio nuts it is my dear sweet sister, Pistachio nuts it is.

Please enjoy my husband’s song, “The Ghost of Christmas Past.”  This is one of the reasons I fell in love with my husband.  I was swept away by his voice and his talent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaQpxE0pKTY