The Christmas Stocking

I violated one of my hard-and-fast rules this week: I put up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving.

I justified the rules violation thusly--for one thing, we have fewer days between Turkey Day and Santa's sleigh this year than normal (less than a month), so the decorations won't be up for long anyway; for another, I needed the emotional boost that colored lights and shiny glass globes can sometimes give.

So I rummaged through the closets and brought out some of the Christmas things. Not all of them--I have more ornaments and garland and lights and figurines than I could ever display at one time anyway, but this year I didn't want to do anything intricate or sprawling. Something (relatively) simple for the living room windows would suffice.

When I was finished, the sills were filled with decorations acquired from various places:

A porcelain white pine tree found at the Brown Elephant, a second-hand store in Boystown (it didn't come with a light, but I borrowed one from a Halloween skull);

Two ceramic angels from Marshall's, one with a broken halo (I've always thought that's exactly the kind of guardian angel I'd get);

A very Seussian Grinch doll from a Hallmark store;

A tin snowman tealight holder from a former workplace (the company was moving and he was being thrown out, so...);

A plush snowman from Walgreens;

Peppermint Kitty, a gift from a then-supervisor that I actually liked;

A large, well-articulated, flocked Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer found at Quake, the best toy store on the whole planet;

A spiral, chrome-plated tealight tree bought at a Walgreens while on the way to take care of Dee's kitty, the fabulous Gigi, while Dee was in Hawaii doing the AIDS marathon a few years back;

And, of course, the little fake pine that graced Grandma's living room window for many years and has graced mine for nearly as long (about 30 years in all, I'd guesstimate).

I also set up a few decorations that only I can see, like a ceramic Christmas tree bought at the same Brown Elephant as the white porcelain one, the glittery angel VB gave me last year, and Angelique, the little ornament that usually sits atop my tree, but since I'm not going through the bother of setting the 3-foot-tall faux pine this year, she's resting on my TV, keeping watch over the scene.

A couple of the internal decorations, though, were hung with, I must confess, some reluctance.

I don't remember when exactly I started hanging Christmas stockings for myself and the Girlish Girls. I know I didn't put one up for Lottie, so it must have been sometime after she died five years ago. In the bag in the closet, there were three not-so-neatly-folded stockings, all bought in different years from the same Target. The forest green one was Olivia's. The corduroy one with the embroidered snowflake was mine. And the burgundy one with the white trim and dangling balls? That one belonged to Ms. Christopher.

It's been just over a month since that sad morning when I woke up early, played Christopher the Johnny Cash/Fiona Apple version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water," took the slow cab ride through rush-hour snarl and, in the small examination room at the vet, softly told her that it was okay, she'd put up a good fight but it was over now and it was okay, she could let go now. And before the vet had a chance to administer a second "just to be sure" injection, she checked Christopher's pulse one more time and found there was no need for that second injection. She had let go.

It might as well have been yesterday, though. I still expect to see her come around the corner in the morning for her tin of Friskies. I still her her clawing at the side of the box spring, asking to be lifted to the bed. I still see her at the dining room window, resplendant in the afternoon sun. I still miss her. Olivia does too, after her own fashion. She stopped looking for Chris after the first couple of days, but is all over me when I come home in the evenings, especially after I've been gone for a long time at work or out shoping or whatever. She's lonely without me, but when I settle in to eat dinner or watch Svengoolie; she keeps me company, and I do the same for her.

I decided not to hang my own stocking--not much I expect to find in it this year, though my Amazon wishlist has a few goodies that might well fit and would certainly be welcome. I did hang Olivia's up where I'd put it last year--on the doorknob of one of the closets in the short hall between the living and dining rooms--but I left Christopher's stocking in storage.

It didn't look or feel right though, seeing only one stocking dangling from the doorknob like that. So out came the burgundy stocking, slung over the protruding hinge of the same door from which Oliva's dark green stocking already swung. Christopher was with me for a lot of years, and this first Christmas without her will have its hard moments. But I'm thankful for all the warmth and unconditional love she gave me all that time, and the stocking will remind me, when the sadness threatens to overwhelm me, how happy she mad me so often and how grateful I am that I had her in my life for so long.

Ms. Christopher is gone in body from La Casa del Terror and will never return (though tufts of her fur keep turning up and likely will for some time). But she's not gone in spirit. Never in spirit. And for this Christmas at least, the stocking will help me remember that.