I couldn’t stop the tears on Christmas Eve, but it’s not what you think.
“Of course you cried,” you’re thinking. “This is your first Christmas without your beloved Red.” Yes, it is, and I miss her more than words can say.
I thought of Cory Dahl as my friend long before I thought of him as my pastor. We met while I was the editor of the venerable community newspaper in this neck of the woods. He was one of several reverends rotating on the Faith column, one of the features that put the “community” in the community paper. I think we were drawn together by our mutual respect for each other’s writing.
Red and I had not been regular church goers when we decided finally to formalize our 19-year engagement, and I asked Cory to perform the ceremony, which he graciously agreed to do even though we weren’t really part of his flock. Six years later, he visited Red in hospice and led the remembrance at the funeral home.
I’ve finally been coming to the church where he pastors, which brought me there for the Christmas Eve candlelight service. And sure, there was a moment or two when my eyes welled up as I remembered the woman who was not beside me where she had belonged for a quarter-century.
But the moment that choked me up and sent tears coursing down my cheeks came after the lights were turned down, and everyone’s candles were lit, and Cory encouraged us to lift them high as we sang.
Anyone who looked at me just then might have thought, “Oh, that poor, sad man, alone on Christmas Eve.”
Actually, it was the opposite.
They were tears of something like happiness, feeling the warmth from a room full of believers singing “Joy to the World” with all their heart, brought together by their love of the Prince of Peace. I was overcome and I wished Red was there to share the feeling, but I felt anything but alone.
At the beginning of the service Cory had read the lyrics to a verse of “O Come O Come Emanuel” that we did not sing, asking Jesus “From depths of hell your people save/To give them victory o’er the grave.”
Yes, that was how I felt — saved. Of course I cried.
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