A family tree, and the women I love

AS THE SUN SETS IN A BLUR OF GOLD OVER LOPEZ SOUND this Christmas Eve, I’m thankful for the wonderful women in my life.

Daughter Lillian is here, with our friend Lux, the new steward of our dear old Westsail 32 sailboat. Lillian is up in the loft wrapping gifts while we all listen to “Christmas Hits of the 1940s” on the stereo. My daughter always brings me joy. She’s such a happy, smart, thoughtful, optimistic and kind young woman.

Tonight I’m also thinking of Barbara, whose last Christmas with us — in physical presence — was three years ago, before cancer took her in spring 2021.

My dear wife was my constant companion most of my life. She shaped me in important and unforgettable ways, from the time we were teenagers.

Christmas was a highlight of every year with Barbara. Our Christmas tree was always a work of — not just art, but passion. Every branch held an ornament. Many of them she or a sister sewed or knitted, such as the plush felt kangaroos reflective of the seven Burns girls’ Australian upbringing, or the “Seven Foolish Virgins,” a self-referencing tongue-in-cheek takeoff on a parable from the Book of Matthew.

For two Christmases after Barbara’s death, Lillian and I couldn’t bring ourselves to put up a tree with all the family ornaments. It was Barbara’s special thing, and her absence stung like tears on a hot cheek. The first year, snowed in on Center Island, we brought a potted fir sapling in from the deck and strung it with a few fairy lights, like a Charlie Brown tree. Last Christmas Lil and I spent at a rental cabin at Camano Island State Park, where we outlined windows with lights and fashioned a door swag from boughs fallen in a winter storm.

But the grief cycle continues to spin. Our recovery evolves. This year we are honoring Barbara’s memory with a modest but full-size Christmas tree at Nuthatch cabin. We’ve decorated it with lights and about half our traditional ornaments. It’s progress toward normalcy.

I’m thinking, too, tonight of my new sweetheart, Carol Z., who is spending Christmas with a daughter and young grandson in Thurston County. Her moral support is helping me take this important step with my daughter.

Carol has been touchingly sensitive about my need to remember and honor Barbara. Carol passionately expresses her understanding that Barbara’s love and my many years with her will always be an important part of me. For that I’m immensely grateful.

So Carol and Barbara are both with me tonight, if not physically in the room, at my little cabin in the San Juans. I’m a lucky man.