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Every time I smell the wonderful aroma of a real Christmas tree, I remember one that was very special to me and who made it so special.
It was Christmas of 1960: the first Christmas I was to observe with no parents and the last one in the only home I had ever known.
My mother had died three years before, just as I was entering high school. Dad, my single brother, Jack, and I managed to keep house, but Dad felt the loss of my mother very deeply. He did what had to be done but no longer had any zest for life.
So, to celebrate Christmas he was content to purchase a small, white, artificial tree and put it up each year rather than getting a real one as we had always done in the past. It was enough; it would do.
Then, just as he was coming out of his personal mourning and returning to normal life, in January 1960, he died.
At a family conference, my two older brothers, who were both married and lived out of town, decided that Jack and I should continue living in our house in Maple Heights, Ohio, until I had completed high school. I had planned to go away to college, so the house could be sold then to settle the estate.
Dad’s will appointed my maternal aunt, Theresa Herberth, as my legal guardian. She lived just a few blocks away and devotedly oversaw the household Jack and I now made for ourselves.
Sadly, that same year, her husband died in December. But he had lived long enough to witness the ordination to the priesthood of their youngest son, Victor.
Father Vic was just a year older than my brother Jack, and the two were always together until he entered the seminary, so I had grown up practically considering him another brother.
Now, home for his father’s funeral, the two of us hugged and cried, sharing the same loss.
Realizing that this would be my last Christmas in the only house I could ever remember — we had moved into it when I was around two years old — I wanted to again have a real Christmas tree.
My pragmatic brother just wanted to put up the artificial one Dad had bought. Father Vic solved the impasse by showing up one day with a fresh tree in tow!
His sensitivity to the feelings of a young girl who already had lost so much and whose life would be changed forever when she finished high school the following spring was a very special gift to me that Christmas, more so because he had reached out of his own grief to bring happiness to someone else.
Father Vic, my beloved cousin, whose life was ended with a heart attack at the age of 50, is frequently in my thoughts and prayers, but never more than at Christmas time. That’s when the smell of fresh pine brings back the memory of his very special gift to me.
Caption 1: The author is photographed as a teen during Christmas 1960, with the tree her cousin got her for her last Christmas in her family home. (Photos courtesy of Loretta Nemeth)
Caption 2: Father Victor Herberth in this 1963 photo. His kindness one Christmas more than 50 years ago left an indelible mark.
As published in Horizons, Dec. 23, 2018.
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