I see the elderly woman approaching us from across the mall. She is looking past me and at my children with that smile. My kids are at the perfect age to attract these smiles. They are just at the dawn of human interaction. Their speech is still garbled; their language and actions both aped from adults. They, in their search for the right phrase or movement, are often accidentally adorable.

Children at this age still act as if nobody is watching, and adults love them for it.  We are drawn to this innocence, I think, for the same reason we are interested in the behaviors of chimps or sleepwalkers.  We want to see what it is that people do when they don’t realize they have an audience.  We want to see what we would do if we didn’t think so much.

She walks carefully and slowly over to accept the imaginary ice cream cone my son offers up and wins my heart by pretending to eat it.  Taking the interaction a step further, she asks him which flavor it was.  He tells her it’s chock-lick and her smile deepens with amusement. I am scanning her face, watching her the same way I watch the face of every stranger who approaches my children. I am waiting for the clues that all humans throw off.

I’m waiting to see why she’s doing this.

And so it is that I observe her lined face slip gradually from delight to despair.  A line grows deeper across her forehead and her milky eyes fill with tears.  Her painted smile is the last to go, proof in my mind that she didn’t even see the sadness coming until it was already written on the rest of her face.  I realize that I am moving closer to her as her expression shifts, so that when the tears start to roll down her cheeks I am all but cradling her.  She leans against me, frail yet adult-sized.  I am not in the habit, anymore, of being needed by people who are not my children.  It takes me a minute.  I don’t know why she is crying.  I only know what she needs.  And I have it to give.  So I hold her.

She wipes the tears away and catches her breath.  “My husband of 49 years passed away 7 months ago.  Seeing your children makes it hurt more.  Even though they are beautiful.  The holidays make it hurt more.  Even though I love them.”  I hold her tightly, softly offering my condolences.  My son asks me why the old woman is crying, and I stumble for a second.  I don’t lie to my children, but I don’t throw around words like “death” either.  I tell him simply that this woman will not be able to celebrate Christmas with someone she loves.

And that it makes her sad.

As I say the words, my voice shakes and my own eyes fill unexpectedly.  I close my eyes against the tears, while granting myself one full minute to be overwhelmed with this unforeseen grief.  The woman catches me with my emotions and apologizes for making me sad.  I shake my head: clearing it, emptying it. “The holidays can be hard,” is what I say as I help her right herself.

They told me back then that I needed to grieve my brother as though he were dead, but to expect the process to take longer, since he is not, in fact, dead.  And although I am the type of person to tear at her flesh in hopes of getting the pain on the outside, in order to move past it, I am shocked to find that some days it is as if time has not moved at all for me.

The woman shuffles off in one direction as we continue in another.  We meet up later, at the fountain, as I am explaining to my children the concept of wishing on thrown pennies.  I have a wallet full of potential wishes, and so I do not need to accept those that the woman offers us.  But I do accept because I sense that it will give her something to be able to give to us.  I bend down, tuck my children in close.  The woman steps in, and we all throw our pennies at the count of three.

You can’t wish for people to come back.  It doesn’t work that way.  Pennies can’t move mountains.  A wish is only a goal, a direction in which to focus your thoughts.  In my world, you can only reasonably wish for the things that you have some control over.  So I toss my penny in and I hope, for all of us, that the future brings fewer and fewer moments when we are brought to our knees by our pain.  We will carry it with us forever, and we should, because it makes us who we are and it honors where we’re from.  But more and more we will be able to live with it.

The holidays can be hard.  I have always known this.  I push myself off my knees, smile at the old woman and grasp her hand for a minute before exchanging it for my daughter’s. We walk out into the cold air and breathe in the last few breaths of 2010. Soon there is chatter and laughter and bickering and sunshine against the cold.  I rub my hands together for warmth, raising my face to the sun.

And it is enough.

It is more than enough.