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This individual has long been known as a truly outsized personality. Witty, unsentimental – and hardly ever declining to an extra drink. At family parties, he is the person gossiping about the most recent controversy to befall a local MP, or entertaining us with stories of the notorious womanizing of assorted players from the local club during the last four decades.

Frequently, we would share the morning of Christmas Day with him and his family, prior to heading off to our own plans. Yet, on a particular Christmas, some ten years back, when he was planning to join family abroad, he tumbled down the staircase, with a glass of whisky in hand, suitcase in the other, and broke his ribs. The hospital had patched him up and told him not to fly. Consequently, he ended up back with us, doing his best to manage, but looking increasingly peaky.

The Morning Rolled On

Time passed, yet the stories were not coming as they usually were. He insisted he was fine but his condition seemed to contradict this. He endeavored to climb the stairs for a nap but couldn’t; he tried, cautiously, to eat Christmas lunch, and was unsuccessful.

So, before I’d so much as don any celebratory headwear, my mother and I made the choice to drive him to the emergency room.

We considered summoning an ambulance, but how long would that take on Christmas Day?

A Rapid Decline

By the time we got there, he had moved from being peaky to barely responsive. Other outpatients helped us help him reach a treatment area, where the characteristic scent of hospital food and wind was noticeable.

The atmosphere, however, was unique. People were making brave attempts at festive gaiety all around, even with the pervasive sterile and miserable mood; decorations dangled from IV poles and bowls of Christmas pudding congealed on bedside tables.

Upbeat nursing staff, who no doubt would far rather have been at home, were bustling about and using that charming colloquial address so unique to the area: “duck”.

Heading Home for Leftovers

Once the permitted time ended, we returned home to cold bread sauce and Christmas telly. We viewed something silly on television, probably Agatha Christie, and played something even dafter, such as Sheffield’s take on Monopoly.

It was already late, and it had begun to snow, and I remember experiencing a letdown – had we missed Christmas?

The Aftermath and the Story

Even though he ultimately healed, he had actually punctured a lung and went on to get a serious circulatory condition. And, even if that particular Christmas is not my most cherished memory, it has become part of family legend as “the Christmas I saved a life”.

How factual that statement is, or a little bit of dramatic licence, I am not in a position to judge, but the story’s yearly repetition has done no damage to my pride. True to his favorite phrase: “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story”.