Opinion : Blue Christmas: A tribute to law enforcement and difficult questions from kids

Pink Behind the Blue: A Christmas tribute to law enforcement families.

For anyone as old as the Super Bowl or the Ford Mustang, Christmas can be a sentimental, even sad, at times, celebration.

While we rejoice in our faith with the ones we love and thrill at the joy our children and grandchildren have when they help decorate the tree or see the lights or open their gifts or fumble their lines in the Christmas pageant, we also remember Christmases past and those who are no longer here to celebrate with us.

Tonight, the granddaughters were upstairs playing with their aunts before bedtime. I went to the basement to sort Christmas lights. I wanted to create a blue-theme tree as an honor to law enforcement officers, particularly the father of the Vinton residents who was murdered by a lifelong criminal last month.

I found a string of lights and enough extra blue ones on another string to create an all-blue set. I was halfway through when the granddaughters came down.

“Can we help?” asked the oldest.

And they did. They helped me unscrew the other lights and replace them with blue ones.

As we worked, I waited for the question I was sure would come: Why?

“Grandpa, why are we doing this? Why are we making blue lights?”

And I wondered how much I would say, and what questions my answers would inspire.

We do this for the policemen.

“Why?”

We are doing it for a policeman who died.

“How did he die? Why did he die?”

Six years old is way too young to be having those kinds of conversations around the Christmas tree.

I decided that when the questions came, I would say as little as possible.

Fortunately, the string was finished before the question came up. The aunts invited them to come upstairs to work on another decoration project while I strung two strings of blue lights and a string of pink hearts as a tribute to “The Pink Behind the Blue” – the wives and children of law enforcement officers.

I know I won’t win any design awards, but I hope the colors serve as a reminder of the risks that so many people take to keep us safe – and the ridiculous evil that awaits too many of them.

And for me and our granddaughters, the hard questions – and those painfully difficult answers – can wait for another year at least.

But for too many families – including some of my newest friends – those questions are very much on the minds and in the mouths of children. And as always, those answering the questions find themselves trying to explain to children things they cannot fully understand.

So, try, if you can, to use a little bit of blue this Christmas, in honor of those who serve and those who have died, and the questions their deaths inspire from the youngest of those gathered around the tree.