DEAR SANTA,

My grandfather died last Sunday. Yes, the grandfather I never met and who never met me. At about six in the morning, my mother snuck quietly into my room and touched my shoulder, waking me up. She said we weren't going to the hospital as planned that day so I could finally see him; he had died an hour ago. She stopped to look at my half-asleep face then told me to go back to sleep. I didn't sleep for at least forty minutes, I just sat up and thought about this man I had never met, never seen (there were no pictures in our house of him), and never even heard his voice over the telephone.

Two weeks ago, some of my father's side of the family, the one's we don't talk to, said my father's biological father was in the V.A. hospital because his mouth and throat cancer had come back. He had refused to have surgery and was therefore given an estimated three to four months to live. We had a family meeting to see whether my brother and I wanted to see him, I knew that moment that I did but my brother politely declined.

You see, Santa, my father didn't meet his father until he was seventeen. And I don't think my father hated him, it was more that he resented him because he had abandoned him. My father was mostly raised by his grandmother, who lived he with and took care of even through college, and his mother's second husband who treated him no different than his other children.

Now, back to that moment I decided I wanted to meet my grandfather, I knew that I wanted to ask him only one question. Only one: did he love his son, my father? But the questions that lingered after that one required more than nods and negatory head shakes which were all he was capable of doing. If the answer to the first question was yes or no, why had he been so selfish? Why had he hurt my father so much? And not just my father, but my grandmother who I had only met a few times as a baby because she died a year after I was born also of cancer. I still see pictures of her in the house, not like my grandfather, I was named for her.

In a way, even though I had never met my grandfather, his actions affected me greatly. My father always knew he didn't want to be like his father, emotionally neglected and self-absorbed. But you know the saying, Santa, "at some point in our lives, we all become our parents." And after I reached my late elementary years up until my first year of high school, I hated my father and I told him so. I hated him because it seemed we never had things in common, it seemed he was always yelling at me (usually "are you stupid, are you an idiot?"), and it seemed like he hated me too. We only talked to each other when we had too like when I picked up my laundry or I needed my allowance. Once I got so angry at him, I spit at him (I had a spitting phase), and I thought he was going to hit me. But he didn't.

But Santa, in the past couple years, I have slowly gotten my father back. And that's what I am writing you for, this is not a letter of gift wanting, but of thankfulness. Christmas supposedly brings the family out of everyone. That's why I want to thank you, cause Santa, I needed my father back. I don't think he knows how much I love him, knows how much I care what happens to him. I mean, our relationship isn't perfect, sometimes he still answers my questions with a heavy grunt and walks out of the room. But still, we laugh at how anything Rush Limbaugh says is stupid, we both sigh when we get in the car and it's playing a certain radio station a.k.a "I want to kill myself because this station makes me think it ok," and we both think Sammy Davis Jr. was the most underrated talent of the Rat Pack.

Ironically, I don't think I really met my father until I was seventeen. So, Santa, thanks for giving me my father when I most needed him. Even now as I write this letter, I feel a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Sincerely,
E. Williamson