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“Look Daddy! It’s Santa!! It’s Santa!! Can we go see him at the mall tomorrow? Please, Please, I gotta tell him what I want for Christmas.” Jethro hears the words echo through his heart.
“We will see Kelly. It’s going to be really crowded tomorrow; maybe your Mom will take you another day.” Gibbs remembers dreading the ‘day after’ crowds and the long, long lines to see the big jolly man in red.
“But Daddy we gotta go see Santa right after seeing him in the parade, If I don’t I won’t get what I want for Christmas.” Gibbs remembers pulling his daughter into his lap and kissing her nose and then telling her, “Good girls like you always get what they want for Christmas.”
Her next words would always both melt and break his heart at the same time as they echoed throughout the years, “Then you’ll be home for Christmas this year Daddy?”
“If only I had known Kelly, if only I had known.” Jethro whispers to the cold head stone he kneels in front of in the dim twilight. He lays a bouquet of sunflowers at the base and then slowly stands. His knees are the only part of him protesting the long time spent with his daughter.
“Gibbs it’s a disaster! There is nothing I can do with it.” He remembers finding his young bride on the floor of their new kitchen crying her eyes out on their first holiday together.
“Well did you follow the directions on the package?”
“Turkeys don’t come in a package!” his red head wife shot back, “I could barely get the plastic off all by myself.”
“Well did you call your Mom for help?” the young husband questions exasperated at the tears and flour covering the usually spotless kitchen.
“If you think that I am going to call my Mom for help cooking my first Thanksgiving meal,” The young woman gathers a handful of the flour on the cabinet and throws it at her surprised new husband, “I just wanted it to be perfect for us Gibbs.” She exclaims bursting into a fresh batch of tears.
The now flour covered young husband does an impression of a goldfish for a few seconds at the antics happening in front of him. In true Marine style he quickly decides that the only way to stop the disaster from escalating is immediate action.
“You are perfect Shannon. I love you, not some burned turkey or watery stuffing or lumpy gravy.”
“It’s really that bad?” is all his new wife can cries back even harder.
Knowing he had just made things worse Jethro takes the only road left to him and kneels down beside his almost hysterical wife. He takes her tear streaked and corn meal spotted face in his hands and says, “You go take a long hot bath while I clean this up and then I am taking my wife out for dinner.”
Shannon looks up at his bright blue eyes and bursts into tears again.
“What?”
“I love you Jethro Gibbs.”
“I love you Shannon Gibbs.” Jethro answers kissing her hard and long. The young couple never makes it to that dinner and opts for a bath for two after ‘cleaning up’ the floor with their passionate love.
Gibbs finally feels his cheeks growing very cold from the tears he didn’t realize had been rolling down his face while he remembered his first Thanksgiving with Shannon.He lays the bouquet of red roses at the marker of where his heart still resides.
The cold metal still feels as cold as it does every year. Jethro looks quickly around the dark cemetery. Was it this year? Would the pain and suffering finally end this year? He can’t do it.
He holsters his gun and hopes that someday he will be able to visit without the desperation almost winning out in the end.
He has some wheat rolls to try and find for his new family waiting for him at Ducky’s house.