Dylan Stafford

It’s 6:00 am on the last day of 2024. I am up early to write two Christmas memories before I forget them.

We flew home to Los Angeles late last night from visiting my wife’s family in North Carolina.

Grandma has memory loss. It’s been happening for several years. We have to introduce ourselves to her. She needs help with all the basics.

The family adjusts as her abilities dim. It is a lot of work to keep her at home and that is my father-in-law’s wish.

I was proud of my two sons Jackson and Christian, 17 and 12. One thing they could do was to help get Grandma to the car. They mastered the slow shuffle, each holding one of her hands, talking to her, guiding her from the living room and down the three steps in the garage and to the driveway.

“You sit here Grandma,” Christian would say, and he would pat the passenger seat with his free hand. Grandma understood the strong pat-pat action better than the words. She would smile and sit and they would help raise her feet into the car then buckle her seatbelt.

Grandpa and Grandma are in their mid-eighties. They have been married over sixty years. They raised five children. My wife Marisa is number four of five. They have eleven grand-children and, newly arrived, four great-grand-children with two more greats coming in 2025. Grandma’s memory fades, but her legacy is thrives.

We attended Mass together Saturday afternoon. I sat between Grandma and Christian.

I heard Grandma saying all the right responses – “Thanks be to God” and “Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ” – at all the right moments. And when we sang “Silent Night,” Grandma sang all the words to the first two verses from memory. She mumbled the third verse, but so did I.

Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace

We went to dinner afterwards. Grandma got a little confused the ten minutes we had to wait for our table. Marisa ordered for her and when the food arrived, Marisa cut her mom’s meatball into small bites. Last year we didn’t have to cut her meat. Another adjustment.

I brought Christmas gifts, fun UCLA swag from the campus bookstore. What could I get for my mother-in-law? I found blue and gold knit beanie with a pom pom on top. Maybe Grandma might like this. At least it might make for a fun photo, I thought in the store.

Marisa nodded at me after the entrees were eaten and I slid Grandma’s gift across the table. Marisa helped her mom peel back the red-and-white wrapping paper until the beanie was laying there. Grandma didn’t pick it up. She just looked at it.

“Hum,” Grandma gave a short snort, her face stern.

“It’s a hat Mom,” Marisa said, interpreting, “It’s from Dylan.”

Nothing. Then Grandma looked up at me across the table, her bright blue eyes twinkling, and she shot me, twice!

“Pow pow,” she said, holding her hand like an imaginary pistol and shooting me.

“I don’t think she liked it,” I whispered to Christian when Grandma looked away. The imaginary bullets must have sailed right between us.

“No. I don’t think she did,” said Christian, smiling, with his blue-green eyes twinkling too.

The next morning, Marisa and I walked the dog.

“You know love,” I said, “Your mom got me thinking yesterday. I couldn’t believe how easy Mass was for her to remember, and that she knew all the words to Silent Night. And then at dinner, I mean, that was funny. She shot me! She may not know what day it is, but she knew she didn’t like that beanie. If I get to the end of my life, and I only have two things left, my faith and my humor, that would not be too bad.”

What is left of 2024? Just today. What will be left at the end of my life? Who knows. I hope faith. I trust humor. And maybe some short stories like this.

Here’s to what’s left of 2024. Here’s to a bright 2025.

Wishing you and your loved ones all the best. May you build your best legacy in 2025.