2011 Christmas Eve

A profound sense of emotion brought on by the death of someone dear to me, haunts me this Christmas Eve. It would be easy to turn back fifteen months and look at myself standing graveside with a small group of mourners, blame that one moment in time for how I feel. It would also be wrong.

My wife suffers from losing her mother and, too, watching, feeling helpless about the silent intensity of her father’s pain. He moves through his days with an effort weighed down by his personal suffering and loss.

My oldest daughter suffers from losing her boyfriend to a single rash act, a moment in her life so pivotal as to be staggering in its profundity.

This Christmas Eve, it seems to me, moments of the past strung together like bitter pearls of minutes of missed opportunity slowly steal the future, or, at least, tarnish the possible shine of a new day with the anger they bear with them. The mirror of images viewed so frequently becomes smeared with regret and what is then seen instead appears more like a future filled with sorrow than a chance for life’s opportunity and joys, the past a cocoon of comfort, not a smothering haven of mixed and faded memories.

Now I am not one to stare into crystal balls, or read cards spread across a tabletop. I do not attempt to convince myself that a miracle awaits around corners where demons hide to deter access. I do not believe in the simplicity of answers born from the misery of the past, or of the pretension that if I do nothing but seek solace in the errors I once made, I will somehow find the key to changing the indelible truth of it all.

Honestly, I am not sure there is such a truth, but do know the past is irrefutable. I suppose the more I stare backwards the more I see, but also see less of what was and more of what I wish could have been. Perhaps that is the way we hope to change our failures instead of learning and applying that to how we live now.

Pain seems to be more attractive, drawing us into its inescapable spiderweb of tangled horror, than the pleasure drawn from possibility is.

I do not believe that life must make some kind of rational sense, that loss stops the flow of what is good like the love surrounding me. I do not want to or need to stifle the mystery of it all. Sure pain and loss stagger me, but if that is what we live for, a reaction to that which overwhelms, instead of trying to enjoy all that remains, then I can only wonder how any person finds any joy in today, Christmas Eve.

The 2011 Christmas Story

Death and Christmas seemed incompatible. Yet as I stood at the foot of the grave, still unmarked by a headstone, acceptance quivered around me as if riding the thin snowflakes as they landed like individuals determined to blanket the past.

It bothered me that I would no longer hear her voice, her footsteps as she entered the room where we waited. It bothered me that seasonal customs suddenly seemed more about who she was and what she had wanted when alive. Did we ever want something else? Was her desires a definition of us, our beliefs, too? Had her past determined her future so thoroughly that she could not redefine it for herself, as we seemed unable to do for ourselves?

Perhaps she knew more about living, or more about acceptance. Her life led her through a time and places long gone. Neither offered experiences we could meld into our own without her there to show us the way.


I brushed the accumulating snow with the edge of my boot as if attempting to draw a snow angel without the commitment of laying in it. Then drew a weak Christmas tree shape and knew that I wanted to ignore my feelings instead of sorting through how crippled I felt by them.

There was a chance, I knew, that the true meaning of Christmas was locked into experiences and memories of Christmas' past that I suddenly felt I no longer knew how to access. How sad was it that I felt the season was now an aimless trek from store to store, with a brief visit here and there. The droning overhead music sounded trapped in a bubble that appeared on an earlier date each year. The songs ran together without definition.

A cold wind snapped at the collar of my coat. I stuffed my hands into my pockets hoping for some warmth and knew the warmth I needed came from somewhere else.

The wreath I brought with me looked festive, colors brilliant. Unlike the withered wreath forgotten on a marked grave in the back of the cemetery. That one seemed as old as I felt.

I squatted, and smoothed the snow off the red ribbon, then quickly jammed my hand back in my pocket.

Behind me, a car horn sounded impatiently, along with the roar of an engine, chirping tires. Even a place as remote as a cemetery offered little escape from the bleating crowds that did not care for meaning beyond the gifts they bought and received.

Expression sat in ribbon festooned boxes, piled under decorated trees that, come the day after Christmas, meant nothing more than landfill.

I began to understand what truly bothered me. I was feeling that there was no reason to celebrate Christmas. All the effort provided nothing. We stress giving as the meaning for the season, yet it seems that it's receiving we care most about.

I don't think she ever felt that way. I think she understood giving in a way others did not.

Giving to receive is not giving, but is receiving only.

Okay, I thought. Maybe that's part of it, a place to start.

The snow fell steadily, thicker flakes that piled up and buried my drawn tree. I could feel it on my head, trickling down my neck and with a final quiet message I did not want to speak aloud, I turned and walked the snow buried path and hoped I could now begin to find a Christmas I might call my own.