My wife Christina loved all the holidays. Every year as Halloween approaches, the boxes and bins containing all the Halloween decorations are brought out to decorate the house. The house becomes filled with skeletons, spiders and the small rugs and dish towels are switched to ones with little ghosts on them. Next is Thanksgiving, so skeletons and spiders become turkeys and fall leaves. Followed by Christmas, her favorite holiday of all, so much so that we had not just one Christmas tree, but two Christmas trees.

Christina loved Christmas and how it brought family together and this picture of Christmas stockings is a testament of her love toward her family. These stockings wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the time, love, and effort put in by Christina to needlepoint each stocking herself. The last stocking that she lovingly crafted were the stockings for her daughter in-law and her first grandson, Travis. She worked on those stockings right up until becoming sick and I was able to take them to be finished by the “Shop” for her. While the “Shop” was finalizing Chris’s hard work into the completed stockings, Christina’s sickness forced her to be admitted to the Chandler Regional Hospital. During her time in the hospital, visitation was extremely limited which meant that she was alone 90% of the time. During this same time, I also contracted COVID and became very ill, but wasn’t admitted to the hospital and instead was given treatment and sent home. After brutally recovering from COVID, I swung by the “Shop” to retrieve the completed stockings, so that I could surprise my wife by bringing them to her in the hospital once she was allowed to have visitors. Both of her sons also stopped by to visit but were forced to visit at separate times and only for 30 minutes due to visitation ‘protocols’. Little did we know this would be the last time we would be able to share a conversation, share a smile, share a hug, watch a new video of her 1-year-old grandson Travis, talk about both of her son’s graduating college and their upcoming graduation ceremony in less than a week… before later that night when she was forced to be placed unconscious to undergo tracheal intubation followed by being attached to a ventilator until ultimately slipping away.

Being able to share the completed stockings with her brought her so much happiness in a time where she was her most scared and vulnerable. The incredible people working at the “Shop” truly helped provide my wife Christina with love in her final moments and our family stockings they helped complete will continue to spread my wife’s love for her family and the holidays.