December 23, 2020: Christmas Eve Kindness

Last year, on December 23^rd, our old dog died.

It was time. It was sad. And it was time. And I posted something about it, and people were kind and sympathetic.

The next day, I pulled myself together and went off to Trinity to sing back-to-back Christmas Eve services. At the end of the kids’ service, I was standing in the back of the cathedral, listening to the postlude, when a nice young guy came up to me, holding his baby in his arms.

“Did your dog die?” he said.

And I gulped a little and said, “Yeah, yesterday.”

And he said, “Would it help to hold a baby?” And he held his little boy out to me, and I said that it would help a lot, and we stood there side by side and listened to the music.

I just went to send him a note of thanks, and I see that we aren't Facebook friends any more. We weren't real-life friends in the first place, just acquaintances who went to the same church and had a Facebook connection from that. And I'm not surprised he unfriended me, because he was pretty Republican, and I've been calling his political party The Bad Guys all year long. But it's just one more small loss in 2020. I send a thank you out to him, for that kind loan of a baby at Christmastime.