Modern Ebenezer
Three days after Christmas, Eben sat down to really consider the experience he’d had. The "dream" that had been so realistic that he’d woken up gasping like someone saved from drowning. The way his heart had beaten so wildly in his chest that his heart rate monitor watch had been loudly beeping.
It was so loud and insistent. Now, in the light of three days later, he had to wonder how it hadn’t woken him up. The sound should have been reverberating in the background of that life-changing dream. Should have been a jarring discordance as he visited his past and his future while cringing away from his present. But there had been nothing.
The terror he had felt had been so real. As was the hopelessness and despair as he’d realized that nobody would miss him were he to die.
All he had was his money. The fortune he had made through a lifetime focused solely on his work.
He had no close family and no hobbies. The only times he visited anywhere outside of the city it was for work, and he never stopped to enjoy the scenic views along the way. He worked and he went home. It had been the only life he’d ever known.
When he’d been a child, his parents had been poor. His father had been a laborer and his mother had worked in a laundromat washing other peoples’ clothes. When he was 10, his father had been working at the docks and a broken cable had resulted in his father’s legs being crushed. The settlement money had barely paid for the amputations and the manual wheelchair. Prosthetic legs had been far beyond the family’s reach.
Eben’s mother had had to work harder as his father could no longer work. Her hair had turned prematurely gray and the laughter that had always brought sweetness to her face stopped. She worked so hard that her shoulders began to stoop and her hands got rough and cracked.
She had died young. A small cough had turned into a never-ending wracking cough that had sapped the strength from her bones. She hadn’t had a single good night’s sleep and she had withered away before his eyes.
Eben’s mother had died when he was 12 years old, and then it had fallen to him to provide enough food and money for him and his father. He had begun working for a local street gang, running errands and sweeping floors all night while going to school during the day.
Sometimes he wondered what his life would have been like if he hadn’t had to work so hard. Would he have been like the other kids in his class, happy and well-fed, secure in the fact that their parents would always be there to take care of them? Would he have grown up coddled, spoiled by knowing he was well-loved and that his life in the future could only get better and better?
He would never know. Because his life had only gotten worse and worse.
His father had died when he was 17 years old. He had worked so hard and long for himself and his father, but in the end his father had died anyway, leaving him behind. Alone.
He had spent the seven months until his 18th birthday pretending that everything was alright, not wanting to end up in foster care. He had studied hard and worked hard and saved enough money that with a small scholarship he was able to work his way through school.
He had gotten a degree, started a business, and when he’d made a success of himself, his mother’s relatives had appeared. Her cousin and his wife. They had entered his life, acting as though they had always been there, and tried to ride his coattails to a good future.
And that was why he had quietly resented them. Because they had only appeared after his mother and father were dead. After he had grown up and no longer needed them, but had become successful enough in life that he could be of use to them.
His "nephew" was a distant relation. But that family still expected that the younger man would be his successor. That he wouldn’t object to them using his good name to climb the social ladder, and at the end of it all, everything that was his would become theirs.
The dream he’d had, it had shown him that there was no one to care if he died. That everything he’d built meant nothing. That strangers would desecrate his grave because their parents would speak badly of him as the boss they hated.
He’d woken up from that dream, desperate to have one good Christmas. He’d given out raises and promised money to help Bob Cratchit pay for his child’s medical treatment. He’d set up employee funds and passed out end of year bonuses. And the smiles and joy he’d received had warmed his heart.
But three days later, he knew that it hadn’t changed anything.
He was still alone in a big house. His mother and father were still gone. And even if crowds of people showed up for his funeral, what did that really mean at the end of the day?
Eben brooded the day away and stayed up late into the night. And when he finally laid down on his bed, he wondered if he would be visited by three ghosts that would tell him everything was going to be all right.
But there were no ghosts. No assurances. No supernatural events that would forever change him and his view of life.
There was just him waking up on the 29th of December to eat a bowl of oatmeal and watch the news. Just him showering and dressing and going to work and living another day as himself: Ebenezer Scrooge. Rich and lonely and growing older every day.
It was up to him to make the changes he wanted to see. Up to him to find the happiness he wanted to live.
He had spent his whole life working hard, depending only on himself. He had strived and strained and here he was, at the top of the world.
It was up to him to find someone else to bring to the mountaintop. It was up to him to alleviate his own loneliness.
He didn’t want to leave everything he’d made to his mother’s relatives. Didn’t want to die knowing they would receive everything he’d fought so hard to earn, taking it as their due, as though he owed them something for never having been there for his family as his mother had worked herself to death and he’d fought everyday to make enough money for him and his father to survive in poverty.
Eben spent the next few days in thought. Then on January 2nd of the new year, he made some phone calls and changed his life.
He’d never thought that he would have children because he’d never had the time to fall in love. There had been a brief moment when he’d thought he’d found someone, but it hadn’t lasted for long. He had resigned himself to being alone.
But now he made a choice.
He adopted three children, each to represent one of the spirits of Christmas. Each to serve as a reminder for what he wanted out of life: hope, joy, and remembrance.
There was nobody to bring him happiness. He had to earn it for himself. So he did.
=END=
~Harper Kingsley
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