DECEMBER 24, 1994

It was cold. You know, really, really cold. I was delivering pizza for Papa John’s. The store closed early, around dusk.

With nothing to do, I wandered around Dundalk. I worked there but was staying with a younger brother in Pasadena. I didn’t want to go there and sit the rest of the night.

I had been dealing with an eye infection, and since I was recently separated, my heart was broken. I was allowed to see my kids on Christmas, but I had no plan to visit. Working for nothing more than gas for my car, I hadn’t the means to buy even one small gift for each of them. And on this, my first Christmas not living with them, I wasn’t showing up empty-handed. That was unthinkable to me.

THE CURSE

Not only that, but two weeks had barely passed that spring before my ex had her previously secret boyfriend move in. The kids were already calling him “daddy” and it was killing me.

I went to Bayview Hospital in Baltimore after treating my growling stomach to a Wendy’s triple. Which emptied my wallet of my tips. At 23:00 I walked in from the parking lot to the emergency entrance. My eye had this weird infection that clouded my sight. I would wake up to find a white paste on my left eyelid. It affected my vision, made it hard to see street signs and house addresses at night. So I didn’t care how long I’d be there; it needed care and I had nowhere to go the next morning.

The waiting room was full. Parents with sick children, adults with injuries, probably nothing serious, but pain is pain, and suffering is suffering. I should have been more sensitive to kids sitting in an ER waiting room on Christmas Eve but I was wrapped up in my own heartache and stress.

I checked in at reception and went back outside to smoke. I knew I’d be there for a while. I walked to the darkest part of the parking lot and lit a smoke. I jumped when a voice behind me asked, “Can I get a light?”

I turned. There stood a black man whose face, in the flare of the Bic lighter, showed age, not chronological, but hard mileage, a difficult life behind him. Life had kicked his ass.

And I will always wonder why he opened up to me: he took a long drag, and as he exhaled he said, “I’m here to get myself committed. I’m tired. I’m tired of being homeless. Tired of the drinking. I want to die but I want to live.”

He held my attention and I was doomed to hear his story. It was more horrible than I wanted to hear.

“I used to have a good job. I liked my work. I made money. I had a family. Two kids. A beautiful wife. We had a house, two cars and a boat.”

He smoked, and in the dark I saw his eyes begin to reflect any ambient light there was: he was crying. “She was coming home one day with the kids. They got hit by a drunk driver. They died.”

Holy shit. I wondered how any man could live after that but I guess I already had my answer. He couldn’t live with it; that’s what had brought him here.

The story continued. “I went in the bottle after that. I ain’t never come out. I lost my job for showing up drunk. Then they came for my boat. I didn’t care. Then they came and popped my car. I still couldn’t care. When the sheriff came to take the house I swung on him. I wound up doing time. Then I had to live on the street.”

As time goes by, I remember fewer details. So it is with old age; time steals from us. But I’ll never forget when he said, his voice so full of pain that I welled up with tears,

“I just want my kids back.”

I wanted to hug him, but it wasn’t done back then. And I’ve always regretted not hugging him. I’d never seen a man so beaten in his face and heart by a life and a loss that I could not imagine.

If you’re guessing that I had a change of heart, you’re correct. I thought hard about the last thing he said to me before a security guard yelled at him to get back inside; as a potential suicide, he was supposed to be supervised. The guard was white. He verbally abused this poor man. It made me sick.

Next morning, I called my ex and asked if I could still visit. I said I shouldn’t because I had no gifts. My daughter, aged 11, was handed the phone. “That’s okay, Daddy. Your present can be that you love us.”

With that and the terrible, heart-rending story I’d heard the night before, I decided to go. I don’t remember much. I just know that it was a good day.

Over the years there were many good days. More birthdays and Christmas days would come and go.

Then, in 2012, at a 4th of July pool party, my daughter drowned. She was officially certified dead when the ventilator was pulled the next day. My last words with her were not the greatest. She’d hung up on me. Now I could never make up for it; she passed and I left so many things unsaid. And she left behind three young children of her own. I was there when they removed her from life support. It was an empty, heartbreaking moment.

I couldn’t stay in that room. I left with my son and outside we just cried and clung to each other. I have never been able to put that feeling into words.

After that, the whole family went on what was essentially a nose dive. No one could get past the grief. Nobody was going to recover.

Her brother took it hard. His drug addiction grew steadily worse. He couldn’t function without a stack of percocet. But we did grow closer.

Then came the Christmas Curse. December 25, 2017 was the last time I saw him alive. We visited and played video games and talked, but he didn’t visit again. On February 14th of 2018, having been cut off from percocet by his doctor, he died after taking street-grade fentanyl.

And since then, the Christmas Curse has passed to me. Now I’m the one telling people “I just want my kids back”, and I tell it every December. To anyone I can hold in my grip, like the Ancient Mariner, dooming one more person to hear my story.

I never found out what happened to the man who passed the curse to me to carry every day for the rest of my life. I hope he found help. I hope he was saved.

I rather doubt it.

And that cold night when we smoked in the dark, I never dreamed I too would lose my children. Had I known…

What the Christmas Curse compels me to do is speak directly to you: if you are estranged from your children or parents, you can’t leave it alone. You’re blessed because they’re still alive. Work things out.

2020 has taken too much from too many people; don’t make it worse. Apologize, make amends. Call them. It’s not the time for visits and parties, but you can see their faces and hear their voices on tons of apps, and send a gift. Or just a card. I’m begging you, don’t let another day go by without at least trying to reconcile. Because nothing is worse than losing your child or parent, especially with things left unsaid. That’s a curse in itself and I don’t want that for you.

Think about people who can’t see a family member in the hospital, dying of covid, and saying the final goodbye on a laptop.

Finally, avoid family gatherings. Parties. Stay home. Wear your mask when you go out. Because dying or watching someone die when a mask might have stopped it is even more tragic that a drowning or a drug overdose. Those things happen in the blink of an eye. You can’t stop all the death and misery, but a mask and hand sanitizer can help save you from something that need not happen.

I’d like to wish you all Season’s Greetings, and hope your holiday finds you well and without a broken heart or soul.

But this is a bad time for me. Christmas will always be the last day I was with my son, and he was all I had left. I’ll never heal and I’ll never get past it; and every year about this time, I’m cursed to repeat my story and warn you not to let a day go by without telling your children that you love them, that they’re priceless, and you’ll be ever waiting should they need your help. Build their confidence, self esteem, and tell them that they can do anything they want to do in life. That the sky’s the limit.

Never fail to use and treasure every minute with them that you can.

Again, happy holidays.