Season of Light

The house is full of light. Three trees are decorated, and the mantel has greenery and fairy lights and little houses all lit up as though there are warm fires and celebrations going on inside them. The half wall behind my couch has a lighted row of London landmarks. Even the Globe Theatre is shining, something that would not have happened in Shakespeare's day for fear of fire, ironically enough.   And the island in my kitchen has a lighted centerpiece, a clear polymer stag surrounded by more fairy lights and greenery. Candles grace nearly every flat surface. 

I keep my Christmas decorations up at least until New Year. I would keep them up until Epiphany, but I hate to take them down so badly that I break down and put everything away earlier so that the feeling of dread will be gone sooner. I think it has to do with my Celtic ancestry. The ancient Celts lit bonfires around the time of the winter solstice in order to keep the darkness at bay and invite the sun to return in the great wheel of the seasons. Many cultures have some sort of ritual at this time of year that assures them that the cold and darkness will not last forever.

Those who follow this blog know that this has been a very rough year for me. I need the light now more than any year before. Maybe I'll actually make it to January 6th this year. I need to keep the darkness away. I need to invite the sun back into my life, back into my spirit, back into my soul. 

Just Me

Rain is pelting my window as I write this. It's been raining off and on all week, a good thing for our part of Tennessee because of a two-year drought. It's a bad thing, however, for me. I have been so depressed about the loss of my mother that I have written nothing for a good while. This blog has been silent. My phone has been silent, except for those friends and my sister who realize that Mom used to call me at least once a day and mostly three or four times. When I go all day without the phone ringing, I get really depressed. The worst part of that is leaving home and coming home to check for messages. I almost always had one from Mom. I didn't save any of her messages. They were mostly, "It's just me. Call me." Just "me," like she was of no consequence. 

Our elderly parents begin to think that they don't matter anymore to us because they are frail, or sick, or homebound. We do tend to go on with our busy lives while they knock around empty homes or lonely eldercare facilities. We spend a great deal of our time with them, however, driving them to doctor's appointments, to the store, or the drugstore, sitting with them, feeding them when they are unable to do it for themselves, like my mother. She had benign essential hereditary tremor and the beginnings of Parkinson's. The word "benign" in her primary condition is a misnomer. It is not benign when the sufferer reaches the point that picking up objects like pills or glasses or forks becomes an exercise in frustration and embarrassment. Mother always worried that I was embarrassed to take her out to eat. I was embarrassed for her but never by her. It got to the point that I had to feed her, so we didn't go out much. Her choice. Her handwriting, a real thing of grace and beauty common to those her age who were taught that good penmanship was important, became more and more an illegible scrawl. Every now and then an elegant "A" or "W" returned for a brief appearance, something I wish could happen with her corporeal self. I'd settle for a message on my answering machine.