Waiting for class to begin, we stood in a group with our dogs as our names were called. Afterwards, a man approached me asking, “Are you related to Jim Woolway?” Living on Kaua‘i, far from my hometown of Chula Vista,
Waiting for class to begin, we stood in a group with our dogs as our names were called. Afterwards, a man approached me asking, “Are you related to Jim Woolway?”
Living on Kaua‘i, far from my hometown of Chula Vista, it was a shock to hear someone say my father’s name. I was completely unprepared to hear “Jim Woolway” come from the mouth of a stranger. He told me how he knew my dad and he shared a memory of him with me. Driving home I was elated by this two-minute encounter.
Remembrance. To hear his name aloud was like a shot of espresso to my heart.
This will be our third Christmas without dad. Christmas is the hardest of all the important dates to have him gone. Especially painful is the music of the season. I can’t listen to 99.9 on the radio since they shifted to their Christmas music format. My dad was a great one for singing daily and especially around the holidays. His was a voice that made the ladies in the pew ahead of us at Mass turn around and beam between hymns. When Christmas carols stream through the airwaves, I can’t see through the tears while driving, which makes me something of a road hazard.
Few people here knew my dad, so his memory remains mostly with my sister Suzie and me. Talking to Lori Miller at hospice this week made me realize how important it is to keep memory alive through story. To grieve is a gift — it’s the vehicle that moves us through the loss. Sometimes part of the grieving is to talk story — to share memories.
My family had two Christmas traditions that were uniquely ours.
One began very early in my parents’ marriage — it was the year our cat Fluffy climbed the Christmas tree, sending it crashing to the floor. Pine needles and shattered glass covered the hardwood of the living room on Christmas Eve morning. Since my parents couldn’t afford new ornaments, they blew up dozens of balloons to fill the empty spaces. When the five of us awoke Christmas morning, it was to a tree filled with bright balloons delicately resting between its boughs.
The other tradition is one my dad started when we were teenagers. When he retired from the Navy he took on a few of my mom’s typical duties. One was wrapping all of the gifts at Christmas. Rather than just wrap every gift differently, he color-coded the gift wrap for each of us — red paper with the gold ribbon; green paper with the white and red ribbon — in five different combinations. Of course this didn’t eliminate our shaking of the gifts to figure out what we’d gotten, but it did add an element of mystery and fun to the days preceding Christmas morning.
When I was asked if I was related to Jim Woolway, I answered “I am.”
But most important in that moment was that someone acknowledged for me that he wasn’t a dream. He may not be here anymore, but he was.
And here I am.
∫ I am grateful to have writing as a release. On that note, I’ve included one of the dozens of poems written for my father.
Return
I strip his feet of hospital socks,
one sister rests her cheek
on a gauze-wrapped hand,
another fingers his thick hair
on the unbandaged side,
my mother thumbs
the back of his hand between
plastic tubes and silver needles.
Somewhere down the hall,
a nurse sings to another:
I hear you’re going home today?
• Pam Woolway is the lifestyle writer at The Garden Island. Her column “Being there” appears every other week.
