Dear Santa,
I hope that this letter finds you in good health. Please convey my respects to the misses, the elves and to the rest of your family and friends.
[If you don’t have much time and would like to know what I would like for Christmas, you can skip to the last paragraph of this letter.]
I pick up my pen in the annual ritual that I have been following during the closing days of each year for the past 57 years. Maybe it was fewer than 57 years since I couldn’t have been corresponding with you when I was two. As far as I know though, I have always wanted something for Christmas even when I was two.
I remember when I was older—maybe seven or eight—it was on the night before the big day, my sisters, all of whom were older than I was, took me to the bedroom window. It was just before we were to go to bed. They pointed up to the sky at a particularly bright light that seemed like just a star to me and told me that that was your sleigh moving through the heavens. (I am sure they didn’t use such a big word as “heavens.”) It was a very clear night, I remember to this day. I will never forget feeling so overwhelmed. I really studied the light, and I could now see that indeed it was moving through the sky. That was no star! That was you in your sleigh coming to my house! I could not sleep that night at all. I was so thrilled.
Do you remember when you brought me Sam? That was the greatest gift you could bring me. What a nice dog he was. Just a mutt, wasn’t he? Big and shaggy. Where did you get him? How did you get him in your sleigh?
I think I heard Sam before I came down that morning to the living room where the tree was. I am sure you knew that in my house when I was a kid, we always lined up on the stairs Christmas morning in age order—first my father, my mother, then Sharon, Donna, Jeanne, then me. My father entered the room first to be certain that you had left, had eaten the cookies and milk we left you, and to turn on the tree lights. On the stairs, I heard something kind of, I don’t know, whimper or yip. For the life of me, I could not figure it out.
I never dreamed it would be a dog because Donna and Mother had asthma. It was not a good idea to get a dog or a cat to make their breathing worse. But you must have checked with my parents and they somehow said it would be ok. I wanted a dog for so long. On my paper route I had a lot of dog friends who followed me around as I delivered the Tarrytown Daily News six days a week.
Sam was by far the friendliest dog in the world. I think we had him for about a week or so. I don’t know if you ever knew this. He was sick almost from the beginning. It was distemper, whatever that is. All I know is that he was sick and really suffering. The problem was that that year, it had snowed heavily and we couldn’t get Sam to a vet. We were snowed in. When we finally could get out, my father took him to the vet and they had to put him to sleep because he was so far gone. Dad told us that the vet said he could have saved him if we had gotten him there in time.
That was the worst thing to hear. I wish I never knew that. It made Sam’s loss that much more difficult to take.
It may have been my first lesson on the fragility of life. My keenest lesson on the fleeting nature of life came to me though on December 24, 1967. That’s right, Christmas Eve while you were on your annual visit to our house. That is the day that my sister Donna Marie Cuff died. Right in the house at 19 Glenwolde, Tarrytown. I was there when she literally breathed her last. She breathed out but never breathed in again. Think of it. Don’t we all believe that our breathing will go on forever? I can tell you that it doesn’t, because I saw that it doesn’t. She was 24.
Donna was four years older than I was and she looked just like me. Ski jump nose, freckled face, chestnut brown hair. We used to look at each other and say: “Gee, I didn’t know there was a mirror right here,” and laugh.
It is trite but true: we were soul mates. We shared so much. Sensitive, that is, easily hurt. Insecure. Lost. Searching. Troubled.
She loved music. Chubby Checker, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, the Beatles, Dion and the Belmonts. Once when I was about 12, I went for my mother into the local soda shop in Irvington, on the corner of Main Street and Broadway. They had those juke boxes at each booth. Donna was in one of them with her friends. On the juke box was playing Runaround Sue. I thought she was the coolest, hippest person in the world. I could just not imagine what it would be like to go to high school, sit at a booth listening to Dion and the Belmonts, and sipping a malt. It was like something beyond my greatest dreams!
In 1960, Donna, Bobby (you know, Santa, my cousin) and I went to see The Horror of Dracula at the Music Hall in Tarrytown. Christopher Lee played Dracula. I was 12 and was too young to have seen something like that. It scared the heck out me. It was terrifying. I still remember when Jonathan Harker (even the name has cobwebs on it)drove the wooden stake into one of Dracula’s victims (who spent her days in a coffin) and she turned from this voluptuous temptress into a shriveled desiccated, hag. Ghastly! Hideous! I was so scared I can’t describe it. I was absolutely shuddering.
Then Dracula was stalking Lucy, Harker's betrothed, at her home in London. Van Helsing dutifully placed garlic around her room and put a cross on her throbbing, heaving chest. (He knew Christopher Lee had this thing for her.) Still. Still! With all that protection, Dracula got in and got to Lucy. Everyone knew she was different after that because her eye teeth started to elongate. She also had these fang marks on her neck—a telltale sign that she belonged to him and to the night. In retrospect, very sexual.
There is a point to this. When I got back home after that movie, I was in a state of extreme apprehension. I had this horrible foreboding that somewhere, lurking in my house, in some dark corner, ready to pounce when I least suspected it, was Dracula. Why he would pick that particular night after I saw the movie to get me, I never considered. But he was coming, I was sure of it. Lying in my bed that night, I listened for any creaking noise, a movement of the shade, a movement outside. All the sounds outside Lucy’s room, just before Dracula appeared, were present outside my room. It was quite a coincidence.
Donna. She slept like a baby that night. I could not understand how calm she was. With all the danger around us, she never noticed and just went to sleep. Bobby stayed over that night because we were both in a state of dread and we drove one another crazy hearing some dangerous sound that the other hadn’t perceived.
Donna loved to paint and write poems. As I recall, the poems were those of an emotional young lady who put her feelings on her sleeve. She was still trying to sort her life out when she died.
She was pretty, had a lot of boyfriends, and went to plenty of dances. One of her boyfriends, John, called after she died. I told him about her. He said he was sorry and I never heard from him again.
Donna had an ovarian cyst and it was treated surgically by removing the entire ovary with the growth on it. They didn’t remove the second one so she could have the chance to have children. Too bad they didn’t take it out at the same time, because the cancer grew onto the second ovary and it was inoperable for some reason. She did get chemotherapy but it clearly didn’t work. The tumor on her ovary grew and grew until she looked like she was pregnant. Isn’t that a bitter pill: a 24 year old beautiful girl in child bearing years looking like she was pregnant with a baby that was killing her? When she died, my mother cried for about a thousand years. None of us ever got over it. Christmas was never the same after that. Sorry Santa.
Donna’s loss impacted me tremendously and for the good. Not having her around showed me how precious life is. That it is an extraordinary gift to be enjoyed and celebrated. To this day, I have a yearning for Donna’s company. Not long after she died, I had a dream about her. It was an intense and powerful presence. She came to me and told me not to grieve for her, that she loved me, and that she was happy with God in heaven. She told me she was going but would see me when I went to God. When I woke up, I was at peace. I was full of tranquility. I had no doubt that what she told me was so. I have none now.
I now have three children and I view them as a gift from God. I feel so lucky, so fortunate, and truly grateful. What more can one ask for than to be blessed with moral, happy, healthy, educated, religious, children. Rich? I have known for a long time that I am wealthy beyond measure. Thank you, God.
I also realize my great fortune to married to such a fine woman as Mary. And, as I read somewhere, to be a good father one must first be a good spouse. The two go hand in hand. We are together to bring one another to salvation. And to help others.
Now down to the real reason that I am writing: what would I like to find under the Christmas tree this year. I hope you can arrange this Santa.
1. I would like a big hug from my wife and children;
2. I would like some assurance from my children that I can be a part of their lives. I am desperately afraid of not having that. I must confess that I miss being a prime shaper of their lives. I once was able to pick out the only books they read (because I read them to them). At one time, they accepted as gospel everything I said. In earlier times, we only did things Mary and I decided to do. All of that is over. And I miss it. Of course, I don’t want it back. To turn the clock back would be pathological. My goal as a parent is to produce independent offspring. Still I miss it. So I would like them to put my mind at rest that I can, in some small part, share in their lives.
3. Materialistically, I would like a portable DVD player, a plush king size blanket, and a book that discusses movies that are out and available.
Thanks Santa
Jack
I hope that this letter finds you in good health. Please convey my respects to the misses, the elves and to the rest of your family and friends.
[If you don’t have much time and would like to know what I would like for Christmas, you can skip to the last paragraph of this letter.]
I pick up my pen in the annual ritual that I have been following during the closing days of each year for the past 57 years. Maybe it was fewer than 57 years since I couldn’t have been corresponding with you when I was two. As far as I know though, I have always wanted something for Christmas even when I was two.
I remember when I was older—maybe seven or eight—it was on the night before the big day, my sisters, all of whom were older than I was, took me to the bedroom window. It was just before we were to go to bed. They pointed up to the sky at a particularly bright light that seemed like just a star to me and told me that that was your sleigh moving through the heavens. (I am sure they didn’t use such a big word as “heavens.”) It was a very clear night, I remember to this day. I will never forget feeling so overwhelmed. I really studied the light, and I could now see that indeed it was moving through the sky. That was no star! That was you in your sleigh coming to my house! I could not sleep that night at all. I was so thrilled.
Do you remember when you brought me Sam? That was the greatest gift you could bring me. What a nice dog he was. Just a mutt, wasn’t he? Big and shaggy. Where did you get him? How did you get him in your sleigh?
I think I heard Sam before I came down that morning to the living room where the tree was. I am sure you knew that in my house when I was a kid, we always lined up on the stairs Christmas morning in age order—first my father, my mother, then Sharon, Donna, Jeanne, then me. My father entered the room first to be certain that you had left, had eaten the cookies and milk we left you, and to turn on the tree lights. On the stairs, I heard something kind of, I don’t know, whimper or yip. For the life of me, I could not figure it out.
I never dreamed it would be a dog because Donna and Mother had asthma. It was not a good idea to get a dog or a cat to make their breathing worse. But you must have checked with my parents and they somehow said it would be ok. I wanted a dog for so long. On my paper route I had a lot of dog friends who followed me around as I delivered the Tarrytown Daily News six days a week.
Sam was by far the friendliest dog in the world. I think we had him for about a week or so. I don’t know if you ever knew this. He was sick almost from the beginning. It was distemper, whatever that is. All I know is that he was sick and really suffering. The problem was that that year, it had snowed heavily and we couldn’t get Sam to a vet. We were snowed in. When we finally could get out, my father took him to the vet and they had to put him to sleep because he was so far gone. Dad told us that the vet said he could have saved him if we had gotten him there in time.
That was the worst thing to hear. I wish I never knew that. It made Sam’s loss that much more difficult to take.
It may have been my first lesson on the fragility of life. My keenest lesson on the fleeting nature of life came to me though on December 24, 1967. That’s right, Christmas Eve while you were on your annual visit to our house. That is the day that my sister Donna Marie Cuff died. Right in the house at 19 Glenwolde, Tarrytown. I was there when she literally breathed her last. She breathed out but never breathed in again. Think of it. Don’t we all believe that our breathing will go on forever? I can tell you that it doesn’t, because I saw that it doesn’t. She was 24.
Donna was four years older than I was and she looked just like me. Ski jump nose, freckled face, chestnut brown hair. We used to look at each other and say: “Gee, I didn’t know there was a mirror right here,” and laugh.
It is trite but true: we were soul mates. We shared so much. Sensitive, that is, easily hurt. Insecure. Lost. Searching. Troubled.
She loved music. Chubby Checker, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, the Beatles, Dion and the Belmonts. Once when I was about 12, I went for my mother into the local soda shop in Irvington, on the corner of Main Street and Broadway. They had those juke boxes at each booth. Donna was in one of them with her friends. On the juke box was playing Runaround Sue. I thought she was the coolest, hippest person in the world. I could just not imagine what it would be like to go to high school, sit at a booth listening to Dion and the Belmonts, and sipping a malt. It was like something beyond my greatest dreams!
In 1960, Donna, Bobby (you know, Santa, my cousin) and I went to see The Horror of Dracula at the Music Hall in Tarrytown. Christopher Lee played Dracula. I was 12 and was too young to have seen something like that. It scared the heck out me. It was terrifying. I still remember when Jonathan Harker (even the name has cobwebs on it)drove the wooden stake into one of Dracula’s victims (who spent her days in a coffin) and she turned from this voluptuous temptress into a shriveled desiccated, hag. Ghastly! Hideous! I was so scared I can’t describe it. I was absolutely shuddering.
Then Dracula was stalking Lucy, Harker's betrothed, at her home in London. Van Helsing dutifully placed garlic around her room and put a cross on her throbbing, heaving chest. (He knew Christopher Lee had this thing for her.) Still. Still! With all that protection, Dracula got in and got to Lucy. Everyone knew she was different after that because her eye teeth started to elongate. She also had these fang marks on her neck—a telltale sign that she belonged to him and to the night. In retrospect, very sexual.
There is a point to this. When I got back home after that movie, I was in a state of extreme apprehension. I had this horrible foreboding that somewhere, lurking in my house, in some dark corner, ready to pounce when I least suspected it, was Dracula. Why he would pick that particular night after I saw the movie to get me, I never considered. But he was coming, I was sure of it. Lying in my bed that night, I listened for any creaking noise, a movement of the shade, a movement outside. All the sounds outside Lucy’s room, just before Dracula appeared, were present outside my room. It was quite a coincidence.
Donna. She slept like a baby that night. I could not understand how calm she was. With all the danger around us, she never noticed and just went to sleep. Bobby stayed over that night because we were both in a state of dread and we drove one another crazy hearing some dangerous sound that the other hadn’t perceived.
Donna loved to paint and write poems. As I recall, the poems were those of an emotional young lady who put her feelings on her sleeve. She was still trying to sort her life out when she died.
She was pretty, had a lot of boyfriends, and went to plenty of dances. One of her boyfriends, John, called after she died. I told him about her. He said he was sorry and I never heard from him again.
Donna had an ovarian cyst and it was treated surgically by removing the entire ovary with the growth on it. They didn’t remove the second one so she could have the chance to have children. Too bad they didn’t take it out at the same time, because the cancer grew onto the second ovary and it was inoperable for some reason. She did get chemotherapy but it clearly didn’t work. The tumor on her ovary grew and grew until she looked like she was pregnant. Isn’t that a bitter pill: a 24 year old beautiful girl in child bearing years looking like she was pregnant with a baby that was killing her? When she died, my mother cried for about a thousand years. None of us ever got over it. Christmas was never the same after that. Sorry Santa.
Donna’s loss impacted me tremendously and for the good. Not having her around showed me how precious life is. That it is an extraordinary gift to be enjoyed and celebrated. To this day, I have a yearning for Donna’s company. Not long after she died, I had a dream about her. It was an intense and powerful presence. She came to me and told me not to grieve for her, that she loved me, and that she was happy with God in heaven. She told me she was going but would see me when I went to God. When I woke up, I was at peace. I was full of tranquility. I had no doubt that what she told me was so. I have none now.
I now have three children and I view them as a gift from God. I feel so lucky, so fortunate, and truly grateful. What more can one ask for than to be blessed with moral, happy, healthy, educated, religious, children. Rich? I have known for a long time that I am wealthy beyond measure. Thank you, God.
I also realize my great fortune to married to such a fine woman as Mary. And, as I read somewhere, to be a good father one must first be a good spouse. The two go hand in hand. We are together to bring one another to salvation. And to help others.
Now down to the real reason that I am writing: what would I like to find under the Christmas tree this year. I hope you can arrange this Santa.
1. I would like a big hug from my wife and children;
2. I would like some assurance from my children that I can be a part of their lives. I am desperately afraid of not having that. I must confess that I miss being a prime shaper of their lives. I once was able to pick out the only books they read (because I read them to them). At one time, they accepted as gospel everything I said. In earlier times, we only did things Mary and I decided to do. All of that is over. And I miss it. Of course, I don’t want it back. To turn the clock back would be pathological. My goal as a parent is to produce independent offspring. Still I miss it. So I would like them to put my mind at rest that I can, in some small part, share in their lives.
3. Materialistically, I would like a portable DVD player, a plush king size blanket, and a book that discusses movies that are out and available.
Thanks Santa
Jack
posted by Jack Cuff | 8:47 PM
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