My Own Christmas Memories (Part 4) http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~ajobebrown/jobe/letters_ch_cale_j_brewer.html CHRISTMAS 1977-1983 On November 30, 1977, I got a phone call around 8 that would change my life. My sister had been shot. An hour and a half later, the phone rang again, Marian was dead and her husband (2nd one and he is now deceased himself) was facing a charge of murder, later acquitted due to lack of evidence. On December 2nd, using all our savings, Chantale and I got on a plane for Texas. Know Daddy bought my daughter a play doctor's kit that year and Granny came over from the nursing home, 3 blocks away. Returning to Canada on December 23rd was one of the hardest decisions of my life. I had already changed the return flight once and Clarence had already went once to Toronto to pick us up and we didn't arrive. To save money, I had decided to take the train, my 1st and last trip, on to Sudbury from Toronto. Today (2004), it takes just under 4 hours, but this was Christmas 1977. We had had a snow storm and it took us over 8 hours. Arriving in Sudbury, near the tracks, I saw the biggest Christmas tree, all lit up. For years I used to try and find that tree, finally locating it about 3 years later, Like the years before, I had done my Christmas shopping for Chantale in September. However, nothing could take the place of the doll she had gotten the year earlier. But then I got the shock of my life as my daughter later named that doll , Auntie Marian, and for the next several months, she and that doll would relive the April before and that awful December. Christmas 1978 just brought back memories of the year before and just before Christmas 1979, I had a miscarriage on the same day that I had heard that Marian had died 2 years earlier. . This was to 'haunt' me for years to come. Then in early January 1980, Auntie, who you heard so much about in my earlier letters was involved in a car accident and after several days in a coma she died. Then early the next January 1981, my father died and 2 months later Granny, my mother's mother died. I did make Daddy's funeral, but it took every cent that we had. Plus I was 4 1/2 months pregnant. Also during this time Clarence was off work for over 2 years as there was a real mining slump in this area. The other mining company had been on strike for 9 months and then they also had a month's layoff. It was the entire town that was being affected. December and January from 1977 to about 1985 became a time that I didn't want to come and one that I despised. I became a 'hermit' and I have to admit now became a person that no one would want to live with. Know that there was one year that everyone wanted a Cabbage Patch Doll and Chantale was no different. I just didn't know how I was going to get one as there were shortages and they would disappear as soon as they hit the shelves. Then I heard of a large shipment coming in, but would be first come first serve, so I waited in a long line before the store opened and it was COLD - remember this is Canada! The things we will do for our children, but it got my out of the house. My son would be born in 1981, and he was a real handful, but he kept me going.