Christmas Angel Even In Death, Writer’s Mother Displayed The Highest Order Of Holiday Spirit

When I was just a little boy, full of curiosity, I asked my mom, “Did your mother hate you?”

She thought for a moment and replied, “No, why ever would you ask such a strange question?”

I answered: “Because she gave you such a funny name.”

“Oh,” she cooed, “Seraphine is a beautiful name. I was named after the angels, and no ordinary angels either. I was named after the ‘Seraphim,’ the very highest choir of angels.”

My mother was enormously proud of her name, Seraphine Marie, and if someone tried to shorten it to Sera or Sarah, she would say adamantly: “My name is Seraphine!”

Angel couldn’t have been a more perfect name for her. As a child she adopted every stray animal that she encountered, to the dismay of her mother, who aptly called her “Katzenmutter” (catmother in German).

All the while we were growing up, she was a guardian angel to my two brothers and me. As we grew to adulthood, she became more of a guiding angel to us. She seemed to have some angel powers, too. When the phone would ring, she’d tell you who it was before she answered it. One time my brother John called from California, and my mom talked to him for a long time. When she hung up, she cried and said: “John’s coming home.”

The following week, he came home in a casket. He was only 33 and had died in a house fire. Mom had cried after the phone call because she sensed that something bad would happen to John.

Despite her sorrows, as each grandchild arrived she made room for the child in her heart and loved the next one as much as the first, no matter who the parents were.

Whatever the need, be it baby sitter or banker, or just someone to listen, she was there for us. Her most special time, though, was Christmas. She made it her personal mission to make sure that no matter how tough times were, her children and grandchildren would have a joyous Christmas.

She did this because of memories from her own childhood. When my mother was about 12 years old, she felt very worried because Christmas was approaching and her mama hadn’t yet gone to town to do the Christmas shopping. Finally, on Christmas Eve, mama went into town.

But when she returned to the family’s Sandpoint farm, she held only one small bag and in it were presents for the five children in the family. They each received an orange, a piece of candy and a small toy. That was all. My mom understood what poverty did to a child’s Christmas hopes and she wanted our Christmases to be great.

So she made sure we always felt the magic of Christmas through presents and through rituals. We had to go to church Christmas Eve. That always came first. Then the presents. Mom derived endless joy from the happy shrieks of us kids and then her grandkids as they tore open their presents.

A cruel twist of fate reversed our roles when, in her seventh decade, my mom became a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. One by one the insidious disease robbed her of things that once she had taken for granted.

My wife and I brought her into our home to be closer and to try to do the things that the nursing home couldn’t. We cared for her three years in our home. My wife took days and I took nights. We had a visiting nurse who helped as well. It was an enormous commitment and very stressful, but we felt it was our turn to be her guardian angel.

She was overjoyed at “coming home” and it always amazed me that even in the later stages of her dementia, she always seemed to sense it was Christmastime.

We would wheel her from the bedroom to show her the tree, the children and the opening of the gifts. Her face would light up. She often had the vacant look that marks some Alzheimer’s patients, but at Christmas her eyes would perk up as if she were remembering Christmases past. At first the disease made her forgot where she was, then she forgot who we were. As time passed, she forgot how to swallow and a feeding tube was put in her stomach.

Our grieving process was long and painful, but finally we resigned ourselves to the fact that she would never be returned to us. That day sadly came when her heart forgot to beat and, mercifully, her struggle was over. I remember standing by her bed and looking at her for the last time. I saw not the vacant, pained face that we were accustomed to, but a face that radiated peace and serenity. When we were young, Mom always told us: “When you die, your guardian angel will come and take you to heaven.”

I knew immediately that the angels had come for her, and no ordinary angels either, but the very highest choir of angels, the Seraphim.

Merry Christmas, Mom, we sorely miss our Christmas Angel.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Vince Gerber, 57, is a Spokane Valley resident. The retired linen supply driver and church deacon is the father of 12 children. His mother, Seraphine Marie Gerber, died in 1990.