Creekside View – December 08, 2024 – "What the Season Is All About"

We sat across from each other in the living room of the house.

It was mid-December, and he had called several days prior asking me to drop by to talk about selling his home.

When I arrived that morning, the kettle was steaming on the stove top with the teapot waiting.

I knew this visit was not going to be like any other we had shared over the years.

He was terminally ill but had refused any extraordinary measures beyond pain control and even then, the medication was used sparingly as he knew it would dull his senses.

All he wanted was to die as he had lived; on his own terms.

We talked like old friends do, weather, family, even politics, a topic always close to his heart.

I was over twenty years younger than he, but it didn’t seem to make a difference; there was a bond built between us one usually only finds with blood kin.

Beside him on the end table was a short knife I had never seen before; only later did I learn it was a Danish “dolk kniv” or dagger.

The leather sheaf it was in had been repaired and you could tell by the worn wooden handle it had been used many times over the years.

When I asked him about it, he got a distant look in his eyes.

“This knife”, he said, “represents all that is good about people.” A rather unique statement I thought.

“It was given to my father when he was a lad one Christmas, and just before he passed away, he gave it to me.”

His father was fifteen when it was decided he would leave school to look after the daily chores on the family homestead allowing his grandfather to earn critically needed cash freighting supplies by team and wagon between the two largest communities in the region.

His mother had died that spring with the flu; nothing could be done as the closest doctor was forty miles away.

The boy supplemented his daily diet of porridge and eggs with ducks, partridge, and rabbits when he could find them.

Dad would drop by when he could but several weeks could go by without them seeing each other.

It was a lonely existence with only a dog for company in a one room log shack that never seemed to be warm enough no matter how big the fire was burning in the stove.

A three-day winter storm had just abated when Christmas Day arrived and shortly after his morning chores were done, the young man could hear sleigh bells in the distance.

He knew it couldn’t be his father as the main trails would be blown in.

To his surprise, a neighbour who lived two miles away arrived to invite him to join his young family for a midday meal.

They hadn’t much to share but the simple act of being with others made the time rush by. There was an exchange of presents and the lad was embarrassed he had nothing to offer to the celebration.

However, the neighbour couple gave him a brown paper wrapped parcel, saying his father had left it with them his last trip through.

Inside was the most beautiful knife and scabbard the boy had ever seen.

It was many years later, and only by a chance conversation with one of the neighbour girls who had been there that special day, when he learned the knife had been intended to be a present from the girl’s mother to her husband.

The young couple had decided it would mean much more to a lonely young lad who was doing his best to prove he was a man.

Celebrating the birth of Jesus is a yearly reminder that God also shared with us his most precious gift with the hope we will treat our neighbours as family.

I wish you a safe and happy holiday season! May God bless your home!

Vern McClelland is an associate broker with RE/MAX of Lloydminster, founder of ProgressiveTender.com, and an active partner in his family’s livestock operation. Comments on this article are welcome either by emailing [email protected] or calling (306) 821-0611.