The Last Gift by Joyce Slobogian is another Christmas story, which focuses around Alice’s feelings, a six year old girl, who witnesses the burial of her own late father on Christmas Eve: “She had been told that her father was in there – she didn’t understand what he would be doing in that box. She had asked her Auntie Rosie, who cried and said: ‘He’s never coming back.’”
Running away from the many people who came to her house after the funeral, Alice retreats to her dad’s workshop. It is here where she finds her last Christmas gift, made especially for her by her father. The short story ends with a glimmer of hope as the first star appears on the night’s sky, signaling the time to put up the Christmas tree. “There would be an empty place at the table, but not in their hearts,” concludes Joyce Slobogian.
The Last Gift by Joyce Slobogian was the November 2009 joint highly commended story of the Global Short Story Competition. If you want to know what Alice’s gift from her dad was, then read short story here.
Joyce Slobogian is a Manitoba-based writer.
