So, I am watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” as I do each Christmas season now. It was my mother’s absolute must watch movie (and one of her favorites). I resisted watching the damn thing until after her death – on principle. She loved it = I should hate it. And I did (even though I’d never watched it). She asked me more than once to sit and watch it with her at my grandparents on Christmas Eve and I flat out refused, usually making some snarky teenaged remark about it.
It wasn’t until my son, Jack, and I came home from the hospital one bitterly snowy and cold December after his birth, that I actually watched this movie. And I cried, and cried. As an adult, I “got it.”.
I wish that my mom was around to watch it with, so that we could cry together. It truly IS a wonderful life, you know.
~Nicole Friess-Schilling, rural Jefferson
