Many Christmas Eves
have passed since the one years ago when I heard the voice of an angel. It was
a voice I can never forget; a voice that gave me the best Christmas present
ever.
Fresh-fallen snow protested
beneath my gumboots breaking trail down the unploughed lane as I walked home
that Christmas Eve. Dry, sharp squeaks, not unlike the cries of cheap chalk
scrapped against too clean a blackboard.
Skuur-eek, skuur-eek.
The boots ignored the
sounds. They moved on, ribbed rubber bottoms and laced high leather tops
creating a meandering wake in the ankle deep snow.
From each side of the
lane, drifted snow leaned tiredly against the backsides of the bungalows,
dropped there by an impatient blizzard just passed through. Their crests were
indistinguishable against the white stucco walls but nearly reached tufted
piles of fluffy snow clinging nervously to windowsills and eavestrough lips.
The squeaks flew
through the still night air, dodging fat snowflakes that fell heavily onto my
cap bill, occasionally splashing into my face, flushed warm from the walk.
Faint strains of
music joined the squeaking as I approached our back fence. I stopped to hear
the music more clearly, now identifiable as singing voices escaping through an
open window.
I shuffled forward
and listened to the notes float out crisply and clearly, then mingle with smoke
rising from the chimneys. Notes and smoke rose together into an icy sky
illuminated by frost crystals set shimmering by thousands of stars and the
frosty moon.
The music was the
Christmas carol ‘O Holy Night,’ and the notes came from the window in my
grandmother’s room. It was open to the cold because most people smoked
cigarettes back then and cracked a window at gatherings to thin the smoke. They
sang the first verse, and, when they reached the seventh line, the other voices
ceased and a single voice carried on alone:
“Fall on your knees!
Oh, hear the angel voices! O Niiii ... iiight Diii...vine! ...”
That’s the part where
the voice rises higher and higher until the singer reaches a stratospheric
note.
The solo voice belonged to Louise
LaFrance, my grandmother, and I knew she was hitting that high note while
sitting on the edge of the bed that had been her prison for sixteen years. She was
crippled with limb-twisting rheumatoid arthritis and suffered searing pain and
the humiliation of being bedridden, a humiliation that included needing a
bedpan to relieve herself and having her son-in-law lift her into the bathtub.
She
had taken up smoking to help ease the pain but had trouble holding a cigarette between her gnarled fingers.
She
never complained or questioned why she had to bear the pain, and despite her
frailty, she was a leader in our house. We brought our problems to her. When we
hurt, we ran to her and she draped her twisted arms around us and absorbed our
pain because she believed it was better that she have it than us.
The others had
stopped singing to listen to her. A shiver danced on my spine the second time
she hit the high notes at the words “O Night Divine,”.
When she finished
singing “O Holy Night,” the other voices started up again, this time with
“Silent Night” and other favourite carols.
I went into the house
and found Christmas Eve celebrants — my mom, dad, and some neighbours — crowded
into the ten-by-ten bedroom that was my grandmother’s world. They sang long
into the night, mostly in French because the neighbours were the Gauthiers who
seldom spoke English to my grandmother and my mother.
After the singing
ended my mother served tourtière, which I slathered with mustard and devoured
as only a teenager can. Then we gathered at the tree and opened our gifts.
I have long forgotten
what I got, and it doesn’t matter, because my real gift was the understanding
that those high notes were not solely the products of my grandmother’s lungs.
They came from a strength
far beyond anything that mere human flesh can produce. They were high notes driven
by something far stronger — an unbreakable spirit.
It
was my grandmother’s last Christmas. But the memory of her high notes and unbreakable
spirit brings her back every Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment