The last Christmas gifts my grandfather gave me came early—sometime in the middle of summer when I was just four years old. They were simple: a stuffed lion and a bear. Yet for him, a poor, broken-down miner with bum legs, they were extravagant. There was no special occasion, no holiday or birthday. He gave them simply because he loved me.
That summer, I spent a long time in the hospital, alone and frightened. On my first night there, the nuns came to feed me intravenously. Their towering white habits, like sailboat spinnakers against a sea of black, only added to my fear. I cried, resisted, and screamed until they bound my tiny limbs to a wooden pallet and stuck the needles into my skin.
The next day, my grandfather arrived. His gait was a shuffle, his bad legs braced by black ankle-high shoes that never quite laced to the top. But he brought me those stuffed animals, his arms filled with comfort and love. One gift would have been enough—the lion. He had always told me stories about lions. Their strength, their courage. Perhaps he saw in them what he wished to be, or perhaps what he hoped I would one day become.
“Think of the lions, son,” he said. “Remember the lions. In your dreams, they’ll protect you.”
And they did. Every time the needles came, I thought of the lions, and I thought of him. Somehow, I felt safe.
My grandfather was a proud man despite his hardships. He always wore pin-striped navy pants held up by suspenders, a starched white shirt, and a vest where his prized white gold pocket watch rested.
“Este reloj cuenta la vida de nuestra familia,” he’d tell anyone who asked—“This watch tells our family’s story.”
It had been his father’s, he told me, and one day, it would be mine.
But that day never came.
One afternoon, as we walked the streets of his barrio near the Brazos River, a gang of pachucos surrounded us. They jeered, circling like jackals, and he tried to fend them off with his cane. They stole it, along with his watch.
“They took your watch!” I cried as they fled. “They took your watch!”
He knelt beside me, checking to make sure I wasn’t hurt. His breathing was heavy, his face worn.
“It’s just a watch,” he said quietly. “Worthless to them.”
“But it was yours!” I said, tears stinging my eyes. “Your grandfather’s watch. You were going to give it to me!”
He looked at me, his own eyes glistening. “Sometimes,” he said, “we can’t keep what’s ours. That’s when we have to learn to be men.”
I didn’t understand his words then, but I saw his tears and felt the weight of his loss. After that day, the watch was never mentioned again. Its chain was broken, along with something invisible yet profound between us.
That summer in the hospital, he seemed apologetic, as if he wished he could give me more. But those two stuffed animals were enough.
“Think of them as this year’s Christmas,” he said.
“But it’s not Christmas yet, Grandfather,” I replied.
He smiled faintly, the scent of rosewater and talc mingling with the sound of his labored breathing. I kissed his stubbly cheek, not knowing it would be the last time I’d ever see him awake.
The final time I saw him was two months later, not in December but in early autumn. He lay unconscious in a hospital bed, a clear plastic oxygen mask covering his face. Tubes ran from his arms, delivering fluids and medicine.
I wanted to stay with him as he had stayed with me, but my father said I couldn’t. I left my stuffed lion at his bedside instead.
“To protect him,” I whispered.
A few days later, he was gone. I cried that afternoon and again at the cemetery on Sunday. As they lowered his casket, I clutched the stuffed lion tightly, unsure if I’d ever feel brave again.
When it was my turn to walk past his coffin, I stopped. He looked peaceful, his hands resting on his vest where his watch had once been.
A thought struck me, a way to give back some measure of what he’d given me. I placed the lion in his hands, near the spot where the pocket watch had been. It felt right—like completing a circle.
As I walked away, I thought of him, of the lions, and of a Christmas that would never come again.
TONY CASTRO, the former award-winning Los Angeles columnist and author, is a writer-at-large and the national political writer for LAMonthly.org. His forthcoming novel, THE BOOK OF MARILYN, will be published in 2025. He can be reached at tony@tonycastro.com.
