Meee

I Remember December
by Lawrence Thomas

Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 Lawrence Thomas

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I Remember December
Based on true events from my childhood, as I remember them.

I don’t remember night time. I must have been asleep when we arrived at their home.
Morning. I remember morning. It was a beautiful sunlit day. The Foster’s lived on the outskirts of the steel city, on a quiet country road. Space enough for another home between them on either side. The daylight beamed in through the windows that covered much of the south wall of their living room. It was cold outside, mid December, but the brightness in the room seemed to give that moment a summer’s warmth.
The room turned cold the moment I saw my mother’s tired face, her eyes swollen and red from crying. She took my hand, and led me over to the couch on the north wall, opposite the window that now seemed dark.
¡°Your grandma is gone,” my mother sobbed uncontrollably. She pulled me close, and wrapped her arms around me. We cried there for an hour. I was nine.

The year was 1982 - our first Christmas without my grandparents in our lives.
We had hardly laid my grandmother to rest, when the clock above the old East Hamilton Radio on Barton Street struck morning on Christmas Day.
It was the one night of the year that children the world over, willingly...