Our Old Rugged Cross

How could I ever live up to Pap Pa's example?

- By MICHAEL FLOYD THOMPSON, Edmond, Oklahoma

Two weeks before Christmas, I walked across our front lawn and around to the east side of our house. There it was, unceremoniously propped against the brick exterior. The six-foot-tall cross that my late Pap Pa—my maternal grandfather, Sherman Floyd—had constructed and given me 22 years earlier. How had I let it fall into such disrepair, with one arm cracked and broken off?

I stared guiltily at the cross. I'd wanted to restore it and return it to its place of honor in front of our house at Christmas, festooned in white lights. And I had tried over the years—trying to fix it with nails, wood glue, rope, even duct tape. Nothing worked. Because the problem was me. I was no handyman or carpenter. I wasn't good with tools like Pap Pa. Never had been. So I'd given up and tucked the damaged cross away at the side of the house, where it wouldn't stare me in the face, reminding me of how I couldn't hope to accomplish anything close to what Pap Pa had.

I would have let the cross be. But then Mam Ma, Pap Pa's widow, had come to live with my wife, Stephanie, and me. And this past summer, the last of Mam Ma's three children had died, and ever since, my 96-year-old grandmother hadn't been her usual upbeat self.

When I pulled out the holiday decorations from the attic after Thanksgiving, we asked Mam Ma if she wanted to set up the little tabletop tree in her sitting room like before. “I don’t think I want to decorate this year,” Mam Ma said. “It doesn’t feel like Christmas.”

Not decorate? Mam Ma and Pap Pa used to go all out for Christmas. They made their house in my hometown of Poteau, Oklahoma, festive with Santa and nutcracker figurines, several Nativities and a towering tree in the living room. The pillars on their front porch were wrapped with red velvet ribbons to look like candy canes, greenery framed each windowsill, lights outlined the eaves, and a wreath graced the front door.