Thursday, December 22, 2005
A RETREAT, HUH ?
Joseph and Lee are right. I should put the warlocks away till after Christmas.
If I do that, I will have to start thinking about what I'm trying to avoid.
I haven't liked Christmas for a long time. Mostly because it was the last day I spent with my father who died when I was a child. The day after Christmas he went to the hospital. He didn't come home. My mother and I knew on that Christmas long ago what was coming the next day. My mother must have known there was a good chance he would not return, but I knew he would. I saw him one more time only briefly in the hospital between Christmas and New Year's.
Every year at this time the memories come rushing back. The memory of what I was wearing the last time I saw him--a black felt skirt with owls on it. I can still see the owls and the hospital corridor, and my dad in his hospital bed. The memory of the snow shovel that my aunt and uncle gave him, and of Christmas at their house with fire in the fireplace and an aluminum tree. I remember them wishing him good luck as we left at the end of the day. And then I remember sitting in that same livingroom a week later when my mother told me he had died.
Then come the memories of the funeral--of sitting in a back room at the funeral home watching the cukoo clock and escaping all those grown-ups. Of my older cousin going home with me and building a snowman. Of memorizing my aunt's door combination because there wouldn't be any grown-ups around to let us in the house. Of my grandfather, who I rarely saw because he lived too far away, and of his concern that I was crying when I had my face in my hands, only to learn that I was playing hide-n-seek with my cousins and counting. That was the last time I saw my grandfather.
I remember the morning of the funeral wanting to kiss my dad goodbye and trying to pick up his hand, only to discover that it wouldn't move, and then bending over the casket to kiss him. I remember walking down the aisle at church behind the casket--the blue coat I was wearing with the dark velvet trim, the squishy sound of my boots on the stone floor, discovering that my classmates were there in the pews. I remember coming back to our house after the funeral and all the commotion of the funeral meal. Then there was the first day back at school when my teacher made me put my rosary away and get back to the business of study.
There have been many deaths and many funerals since then, but none of them have had the same impact. We face death. We cry over it. Then we move on. But there is a nine-year-old inside of me that never moved on. Losing a parent in childhood is not like losing one in the normal course of events. My father had been the center of my world, and that world was shattered one Christmas season long ago.
Sometimes I wonder who I would be if he had lived. I would not be the person I became. The child who went to sleep on that Christmas night never woke up again, and the little adult that emerged has never fully trusted anyone she loved to hang around.
This year the memories are especially vivid. Two of the neighbor ladies I've been close to are moving away--one tomorrow, the other next July. My last living relative in my parents generation died recently, and this is the first year my daughter is not home for Christmas. She lives nearby now and will be here Christmas day, but it's not the same. The house is too quiet and there seems to be no point to the decorations. I'm not busy enough with Christmas preparations because I started early this year. There is too much time to think.
None of that, though, is a valid excuse for ignoring Christmas. We have to take our lumps in life and avoid giving in to self-pity, which is sometimes more of a struggle. I should put some Christmas music on. I should sing some carols. I should stay out of websites dedicated to the enemy of the baby in the straw. I should forget about a pope with new ideas about how to get along. I should. And I will, but first I guess it's necessary to take the time to remember and shed a tear or two for what might have been if life had not been what it was. And to exorcise the memories by writing them in a blog.
