‘The Christmas Box Collection’: A shade under divine

This Week’s Winner

May Anne Soriano Cacdac is a journalist and writes for a weekly in Baguio City. “My love for reading was inspired by my father who gave me the first books from which I have built my library.  Whenever I told him, ‘I’m going to the mall,’ he always gave me a little extra money to spend for books.”

Don’t forget to pack the book,” my father told me as we were getting ready for his first trip ever to the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center as a patient.

I knew exactly what book he meant and dutifully I went into my room and picked the book off my bookshelf.

The Christmas Box Collection by Richard Paul Evans is composed of three stories. The first book, The Christmas Box, tells of the lessons on life and love the Evans family learns upon moving into the mansion of an elderly widow, MaryAnne Parkin.

The second book, Timepiece, is the story of the life MaryAnne built with her husband David and their daughter Andrea. The third book, The Letter, is David and MaryAnne’s love story — how their love endures through a long and painful separation after a tragic loss in the family.

The collection is filled with beautiful prose. Richard Paul Evans, in all his simplicity, delves deep into the heart of humanity and offers us a deeper understanding of unconditional love.

This book is special because it is the story of my life. It is also the story of your life. Not only will you be compelled to read the valuable lessons in the stories, you will be moved to live these lessons and find yourself a better person.

There are moments, when reading this book, that you will find yourself in tears. You will probably have to put the book down, go to a corner and reflect on the lines you just read. I assure you that your tears will not be in vain —after the initial sadness, joyful tears will follow.

I suddenly remembered Papa describing the collection as “just a shade under divine.”

It was through divine powers that this book came into our lives. Between its pages my papa and I found our love to be stronger. As I put the book in the bag, I also packed a prayer and hope that everything would be all right.

* * *

There are moments, it would seem, that were created in some cosmic theater where we are given strange and fantastic tests. In these times, we do not show who we are to God, for surely He must already know, but rather to ourselves. — David Parkin in Timepiece

My father was diagnosed with a malignant tumor on his tongue on Dec. 10, 2005. We were then referred to a cancer surgeon who urgently scheduled him for surgery to remove the tumor. We’re going to be fine, he assured us, as long as we don’t waste any more time.

On Dec. 14, 2005, Papa was put under the knife. After two hours of surgery, I checked on him in the recovery room. He was conscious and was talking to the nurse with a pen and paper. From a distance, I saw how swollen his mouth was.

 “How did I do?” he wrote on the piece of paper and showed it to the nurse as I approached him. “Sir, you were great,” the nurse told him with a smile. He nodded. He faced me and then wrote, “Complete the Aguinaldo Masses and wish for a baby for your Ate Cherry. Also go to City Hall, check if I have some work to do. Bring chocolate for the daughter of Myla.”

I tried to hold back the tears. I kissed him on the forehead and told him that I would check on him again after he had some sleep. “Don’t bother. I feel great. I’ll see you when they room me in.”

I nodded again and walked out of the recovery room. I headed for the chapel, prayed and cried like I had never cried for my father before.

This is what it means to be a daughter — to learn from the selflessness and courage of your father, to realize that in giving his life to you, he is also giving you the courage to give birth to a life of your own.

* * *

There is nothing so healing to oneself as to heal another. — David Parkin in The Letter

Papa was able to go back to his work as secretary to the Mayor of Baguio right after the New Year. There he immersed himself in doing the thing that he loved most — public service — while passing on to me his role as a pioneering journalist in the city.

It’s time you took my place, he said.

Everything was all right until we found out from our doctor that he had to go through another surgery. It was confirmed: cancer. This time the lump was wedged in his lymph nodes. Again we headed to the hospital and he went under the knife on May 10, six days before I celebrated my 29th birthday.

This time we could already feel the pressure of the mounting medical bills but thanks to Ate Cherry, a nurse in Chicago, the pressure was lessened.

Uncle Mondax, Papa’s best friend and fellow journalist, asked Papa if he could write about his plight in his column in a local weekly. “To help with your finances,” Uncle Mondax offered. Papa declined. He proceeded to tell his friend about the plight of a two-year-old girl in need of immediate medical attention because of a heart defect. “Please, Mondax,” he said, “help her instead.”

Uncle Mondax told me that it was my father who first thought of writing about underprivileged children in the city in need of medical help to be able to raise funds for them. The very first baby (then months-old) he was able to help is now 27 years old.

The toddler girl with the heart defect has already undergone surgery and she’s been given a good prognosis. Meanwhile, my father underwent surgery yet again on his tongue on June 20. We were admitted to the hospital on June 19 but not before we celebrated Father’s Day first as he requested.

“My treat,” he said.

* * *

When we bury someone we love, we must also bury a part of our heart. But we should not bemoan this loss. Our hearts, perhaps, are all they can take with them. — David Parkin in The Letter

During his third surgery, I stayed outside the operating room all the while and when the operation was done, I waited until I was ready to go inside into the recovery room to see him.

He was awake and when he saw me, he reached out his hand to me. I walked up to him, took his hand and held it close to my heart. “This is my most painful operation,” he tried so hard to tell me.

We fell silent. As I held his hand to my heart, I wanted so much to tell him that my heart had always been his, to tell him that the times I was so far away from him were the times I felt so far away from the blessings of God.

My father held my heart in his hand, a heart once broken now whole.

He died on July 11. It was a rainy afternoon. He died peacefully, my mother told me. I wasn’t by his side. I was away on a trip in preparation for his first chemotherapy, which was scheduled for July 21. Friends and family all shared stories of Papa’s generosity and kindness. He was given a memorial service befitting an official of the city of Baguio.

I have been missing his quiet yet loving presence but during my most painful moments I reach out for The Christmas Box Collection and hear the voice of my father retelling these wonderful stories and feeling mighty proud that, at last, his girl’s got it.

That some things, like a parent’s love, do last forever in a time and place where all broken hearts will forever be made whole. And if, in the silent vastness of a mysterious universe, or in the quietness of men’s hearts, there is such a place as heaven, then it couldn’t be anything more than that. — Richard Evans in Timepiece