Story for the Week
Christmas was my husband’s favorite holiday. We all know people who share posts on social media a day or two after Christmas about how many days are left until Christmas, and Dennis was no exception. But he made his first 2020 Christmas post on Facebook (tagging me, of course) on April 26, informing me that there were only eight more months until Christmas. After that, there was at least one post a month about how many months or weeks or Mondays or Fridays there were until his favorite holiday. I reacted to almost every one with an eyeroll 🙄, but they all secretly made me shake my head and chuckle.
He looked forward to Christmas like no other holiday. Each year, we bought a personalized specialty family ornament. Some years, we bought two if we had extended family staying with us so that we could include every name. This past August, he ordered a Disney train to go around the Disney village under the tree. When I asked him why, because we already have a Disney monorail, he said, “We can alternate.” He took photos as we decorated the tree, and every year, he took a new picture of every specialty ornament. It didn’t matter that they were the same ornaments he took pictures of the previous year. He still wanted (*cough* needed *cough*) new pictures.
I always struggled to think of something for him to give me for Christmas, so it’s good that he was a great gift-giver. Shopping for him was never a challenge though. He started thinking about gifts months in advance, and he would send links over text and email for things that he wanted. No matter what he asked for, he also got a pile of gifts from his favorite English soccer team, the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (COYS). One of those gifts was a calendar, and he refused to look at the pictures until the appropriate month. Our daughter and I talked just a few days ago about how he didn’t get to see the last three months for 2020, so he didn’t know who else was in the calendar. I wish I had told him those last couple of days in the hospital.
In one of Dennis’s last lucid moments in the days before he passed, he reached for my hand and said, “I’m gonna miss you.” It’s comforting that we had a few days to say those things to each other, that our daughter had time to tell her father that she loves him, because teenagers don’t like to say those things out loud very often. I’m happy that we always said “I love you” before we left the house or went to bed, even if we were angry. Today marks three months since he passed, and it still doesn’t seem quite real. I know he’s still here to make sure that we don’t miss him too much.
As we go into this first Christmas without Dennis, I’ve thought a lot about all of the things we used to talk about, watching Corinne grow up and start her own family, growing old together—things that he’s going to experience from somewhere other than here. I talk to him, usually when I’m out in the yard with our new puppy. And when we’re talking about him and the mantel clock that holds his ashes chimes, we tell him that we know he’s listening and thank him for his input. 🥰
In one of these moments, I remembered a book I read a couple of years ago—before Dennis’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis, before we knew what the last year and a half would hold, before I knew I would be in the headspace I’m in today. It’s about a man who lost his wife to cancer, and she left him a box of 29 envelopes. The instructions she left for him were to open one envelope every week until he finished all 29.
It was a great reminder that we should say the things we want or need to say when we have the chance because the future is promised to no one.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Things We Never Said by Nick Alexander
343 pages
Publisher: Amazon Publishing UK
Publication Date: September 4, 2018
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Amazon Publishing UK in exchange for an honest review.
Publisher’s Description
Catherine was the love of Sean’s life. But now she is gone. All that’s left is a box full of envelopes, each containing a snapshot and a cassette tape.
Through a series of recordings, Catherine shares their long love story, but will Sean recognize the story she tells? Catherine’s words have been chosen with love, but are painfully honest—and sometimes simply painful. She reveals every unspoken thought and every secret she kept from her husband—revelations that will shake everything Sean thought he knew about their life together.
But as disconcerting as the tapes turn out to be, Sean prays that they will ultimately confirm the one thing he never dared question. Does destiny exist? And were his and Catherine’s love and life together always meant to be?
************
Things We Never Said by Nick Alexander tells the love story of Sean and Catherine Patrick. The book begins immediately after Catherine’s death from cancer. We meet Sean, their daughter April, and their best friend Maggie. Shortly after Catherine’s funeral, Maggie stops by to check in on Sean.
While Sean is not really paying attention, Maggie leaves a box in the center of the dining room table. In the box are 29 envelopes, each containing a photograph and a cassette tape. Tape #1 is a recording made by Catherine and gives Sean the instruction that he is to open one envelope each week. As tempted as he is at times to listen to all of them at once or to stop listening altogether, he stays pretty true to Catherine’s wishes. She was, after all, the love of his life, and this was her dying wish. The story walks us through each photograph, each tape, and each week of Sean’s life as he listens to them.
There were so many things that I loved about this book. It had me thinking quite a bit about The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, and I will tell anyone who asks that The Notebook has been my favorite since I read it. “I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life…But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.” Seriously, what’s not to love?
In Things We Never Said, each chapter starts with a description of the photograph—Snapshot #1, Snapshot #2, etc. They were well-described, although I found myself wishing that we could actually see them. In some cases, we get Sean’s reaction to the photo before we “hear” Catherine’s narration, and in some cases, the narration comes first. This is how we learn Sean and Catherine’s whole story and how we learn the things that Catherine never spoke about. Some of the things will make you love her more, and some of them will make you really despise the way she chose to reveal her secrets.
At one point in the book (you’ll know when), I was thinking that I really hated that the story went there, that some things are better left unsaid. But by the end, I could appreciate that this was Catherine’s grieving process, that she didn’t want to leave anything unsaid even if she wasn’t there to face the music, and it was her way of helping Sean through his grief by reminding him of their love story. When he finishes going through all of the envelopes, it’s been nearly eight months since Catherine’s death, and we have watched him go through all the stages of grief and start the road to acceptance and healing and confirming his belief in destiny.
This is a great read and a reminder to say the things that need to be said while you can and enjoy life now because the future is promised to no one. On one of Catherine’s tapes, she tells Sean “…like the Buddhists apparently say, there is no future and there is no past. They’re both just things that happen in your mind. In reality, there is only ever the present moment.”
Pick this one up. You’ll be glad you did.
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