Daily Prompt: Bittersweet Memories

Today’s daily prompt:  You receive a gift that is bittersweet and makes you nostalgic. What is it?

 

This Kreiss Santa figurine belonged to my mother.  Every Christmas, for as long as I can remember, this figurine sat on our mantel.  It was tradition and it would not have been Christmas if this figurine wasn’t around.  I remember my mother telling my two sisters and me that she had bought it at Woolworth’s for somewhere around $1 back in the early 60s.

My sisters and I loved this figurine.  I still remember my father picking me up as a small child and holding me up to the mantel where I could look at this figurine.  There was just something about it.

My mother became sick with cancer in 2005.  She lived for 2 years and she made the comment many times to me and my two sisters that she didn’t want us fighting over her things when she was gone.  The middle sister and me (I’m the baby) used to joke that we would fight to the death over this Kreiss figurine.  My mother would just look at us, smile, and shake her head.

On my mother’s last Christmas, she handed me the figurine and told me I could take it home.   It was a bittersweet gift because I loved it so much and it was so sentimental to me, but I knew it would never sit on my mother’s mantel again in the childhood home I grew up in.  And the thought of that just made me so sad.  My mother knew it would be her last Christmas.  She was right.  She died December 7th of the following year.

My sister and I actually planned to “share” the figurine.  I would display it on my mantel one Christmas, and she would get it the following year.  We would alternate.  Then we ended up finding the exact figurine on eBay and purchased it.  Later, we purchased yet another one for our other sister.  So now each of us has one and every Christmas we display the figurine on our mantels in our own homes.  We’re carrying on a Christmas tradition that we were all very fond of.  I will always cherish this figurine.  If someone offered me a million dollars for it, I don’t think I would even consider taking the money.  I guess I’m crazy, but that’s how much it means to me.

Gail ♥