As each new holiday season passes, I am surrounded by childhood memories of Christmas and my mom. She was the single parent who somehow made it possible for her children to receive gifts from Santa, who only made $50 a week. She was also the one who led me to understand the joy of giving. One Christmas eve, a few minutes before the stores were to close, I stood in front of our bubble-light decorated tree with tears in my eyes, because I suddenly realized none of the presents under the tree were from me to her. With a wisdom that cannot be learned, she calmly said, “Well, maybe you’d like to take a dollar down to the drug store and find something you think I’d like.”

My guilt at taking her money somehow faded in the joy of fixing a terrible failure. I raced across the street and through the parking lot and arrived in the drugstore just one minute before closing. The clerk allowed me to search the few options available to me, and when my eyes landed on an aqua-colored Paper Mate, ball point pen, I knew I had found the thing she would love. The clerk even chipped in the extra penny for tax and wrapped the gift in tissue paper and a small piece of ribbon! The love in my mom’s eyes as she opened that meager offering lives with me still.

Forty years of Christmases passed before another holiday event of equal value occurred. During the weeks that spanned the end of 1995 and the beginning of 1996, my mom succumbed to a six-year bout with Alzheimer’s. My yearly trip home for Thanksgiving coincided with her move to a full-care nursing home. I found a cassette tape of Bing Crosby’s Christmas Favorites, and spent many hours playing them over and over for her. I watched her intently, totally in awe of this dying woman who had been my best friend. She could not focus or communicate at this point, but on occasion, her drifting eyes would light on my face, and she would beam a smile that I can only describe as angelic. Somehow she knew me still. And still she was teaching me the transcendence of life and love.

She passed away in January 1996. By the following summer I knew I no longer had a home to return to in Florida, so I began searching for a place I could make my new home. When I saw the house on Twelfth Street in Ocala, I knew I had found the spot. It was an old, Spanish stucco house that was in great need of repair. Perhaps it was because it was in such need that I chose it. I needed to renew my life, and the challenge of bringing new life to an old 20’s era house just seemed right and necessary. I think of my mom a lot as I work on the house. I could not renew her body for her, so I renewed this structure, this house that was a home to a young Jewish family during the Depression, a home to a young West Virginia man and his bride seeking their fortunes in Florida in the peaceful ’50s, a home to a middle-aged couple who, after moving to the new house next door, kept the old house as a rental in the turbulent ’70s, a home to the vines and varmints that inhabited the house years before I arrived.

I have discovered that renewal is a constant and one of the most valuable life experiences. Mowing a lawn in the hot Florida sun is renewal. Bringing an old 1951 Chevy back to its original state is renewal. Restoring old furniture is renewal. But, the most important renewal is the one we must undertake every day. We must believe that our loved ones are gifts, we must understand that they may disappear in an instant, and we must constantly renew our bonds with them. By doing so, we allow love to transcend death, and we never look back with a wish that we had done something differently