I put lights on my slender fake plastic tree last night.
This was Greg’s job, stringing the lights, and not only was he good at it, he actually enjoyed the process. Whereas I did, do, and always will huff and pout when a third of the strands of 100 white lights won’t light when plugged in, he’d just…roll with it, readjust to fill in the dark spots and keep looping the Christmas tree, keep on making it shine, branch to branch, upwards and upwards, to the place where soon a star would sit.
I started to cry last night, and not because, predictably, one of the strands wouldn’t light. For reasons I’ll never know, asked Alexa to play The Band’s “Christmas Must Be Tonight” and U2’s “With or Without You”, doubling down on my grief with two of Greg’s all time favorite bands.
Another thing I didn’t do last night that Greg would always do is stand back from the tree, pause, and look at it from different angles. This was not to admire his work, but to ensure it was objectively perfect. I think Greg did this not as a perfectionist, because I don’t think he was obsessively driven to achieve such unattainable goals, but because he wanted the tree to be subjectively perfect for our mom and dad.
The lights on my tree look fine enough, but more than a few are dark.
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