THE LAST ORNAMENT
"He loved Christmas."
My dad was a very friendly, joyful man. A respected criminologist, he retired as CEO of the NYC Criminal Justice Agency. He was originally from the Bronx and worked in the city all his life, even after settling with his family in New Jersey. He was a Jesuit-style Catholic who graduated from Fordham, a place he loved dearly.
He loved my mother dearly, too. And our big old family home—so much so that he gave it a name: The Giving House, because it provided not just for us but for other families my parents helped over the years. He loved kids, and not just his own; he was the one who would sit up late at night talking to us or console us when we needed consoling. He really loved babies; in a restaurant he was always the guy making little faces to make the babies laugh. He loved the New York Giants. He loved talking football with my son and listening to my daughter read essays she’d written. And he loved Christmas.
Every Christmas when I was growing up, my sisters and I each got an ornament in our stocking. Generally they marked something personally special to us from that year—a bike the year we learned, a cake for a big birthday, a violin the year I started playing. The tradition continued when we were adults with our own families. Even when I was nearly 50, Dad was still giving me ornaments. This is the last one he bought me.
Early in April 2022, my husband, Mark, and I took our kids and my parents to St. Michaels, Maryland, for a short spring-break trip. Dad wasn’t himself on that trip. He seemed sick and was always cold, and he skipped several of our activities, including the sailing excursion we thought he’d love. But one day he went out to the little shop in town that sold Christmas decor and came back proudly exclaiming that he’d gotten all the ornaments for the family. Though it was unusually early in the year for this, we didn’t give it much thought.
A few weeks after our trip, Dad was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. He lived only three more weeks, all in the hospital—he never got to return to his beloved home. I don’t really have the words to express how devastated we were. In the five years prior, he’d survived prostate cancer, a quadruple bypass, spinal surgery and pancreatic cancer. It didn’t seem possible that there could be something he couldn’t survive.
The holidays were very hard that year. Dad was a huge part of what made Christmas magical. He was pure joy at Christmas and loved to be with all of us, and it was surreal to be without him. But it turned out we weren’t. Just before dinner on Christmas Eve, my mom announced that she had gifts for everyone. When we opened our boxes, we found the ornaments Dad had been so excited to buy in Maryland. He’d signed the back of mine “Ciara & Mark, Love Pop 2022.” Many tears were shared around the table that night.
A few weeks ago—three and a half years after saying goodbye to Dad—we said goodbye to The Giving House when my mom downsized to an apartment. My sisters and I took all the most important heirlooms, pictures and keepsakes that tell the story of our family. But while decorating this year’s Christmas tree, it struck me that no keepsake is more important than this little candy tree, the last ornament. It’s the perfect symbol of my dad’s ability to enjoy the sweet things in life and a reminder that he’s with us always, most certainly at Christmas.
—Ciara McElroy
Ciara McElroy, an oncology social worker and therapist, lives in South Orange, NJ, with her husband and two teenage children. To her father’s dismay, she became an avid Philadelphia Eagles fan, but still has a soft spot for the Giants because of her dad.
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Thank you for such a special Christmas story and reminding me of my own father and his gentle strength.
What a nice story about your dad- he was a wonderful person! My most meaningful gift from my dad is a Christmas ornament from 1974 with a Norman Rockwell mailman on it. My dad was a mailman for 26 years.