A quick Christmas story . . .
It keeps coming back to me. Or more precisely, the voice mail she left does. Her mother had just died, and she was beside herself.
I have sat on it because I know from experience people will get the wrong idea. No, she does not want money, gifts, clothes or anything like that. All she wants is this one thing.
Her name is Terri Cordova. She is 51 years old and lives in Denver. Her mother, Laura, was 81 when she died of kidney failure Dec. 3. And, to make things worse, her mother’s sister, Elsie Flynn, 77, died Nov. 23 of lung cancer.
Terri Cordova was an emotional wreck when she called me.
She spoke of how she was not going to have Christmas this year, of how it was her mother’s favorite holiday, how it didn’t seem right.
But would I ask someone — anyone — if they would do this one thing to honor her mother.
At first, I didn’t quite understand what she was saying, she was crying so hard. I listened to the message again and, yes, she had said “a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.”
There is a story behind that.
“It has been a long journey,” she said when we finally chatted in person.
Laura was a tough, no-nonsense woman, Terri Cordova said of her mother, who, when her marriage fell apart, raised her and her six brothers alone, mostly as a printer at the old Gates Rubber factory.
“Just a beautiful lady,” Terri Cordova said.
When her mother fell and broke her hip three years ago, Terri Cordova retired from her job of more than 30 years as a supermarket clerk to care full time for her mother.
She moved her into her home, a time when her mother began fading fast. In April, when Terri had done all she could, she placed her mother in a nursing home.
Doctors came to her this fall and told her the end was close. Terri Cordova moved her mother back home.
“She was tired,” she said, “and at Thanksgiving told me she didn’t need the pain anymore. It was so hard to watch my mother deteriorate like that.
“She stopped eating and drinking water. She was 90 pounds when she died.”
A day or two later, she called me.
Terri Cordova is widowed and has no children. The thought of pulling together Christmas this year simply has no appeal, she said.
Her mother’s death, and that of her aunt — they were very close, she said — has wiped her out emotionally and financially.
“I am by myself,” she said, “and I don’t know if that is good or bad. I am a firm believer in God. I know he will help me get through this.”
So she is concentrating on going back to work. Blocked by union rules from returning to her old job, she is working hard to find something else to do.
“I know I have to go back to work,” she said, “or I know I’ll never survive this mentally.”
Eventually I asked her about the thing I wasn’t certain about, whether I had misheard it or taken it completely out of context.
“Yes,” she said, “a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.”
You see, growing up, her family did not have much.
“But every year, without fail, Mom would go out and get the saddest tree you ever saw. It was a nothing tree, but we would all decorate it.
“And you know, we were all happy in those years.”
She remembered a column I had written about Christmas trees, and could I ask the people in it if they would put up and decorate the scrawniest tree in their inventory, the one they are least likely to sell.
In her mother’s memory.
“Nothing fancy,” Terri Cordova said. “That wouldn’t be my mom.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
