This Christmas has felt more ghost friendly than normal. I have been re-watching my favorite version of "A Christmas Carol" with Patrick Stewart a lot since this Fall. It has been my election disaster coping tool. This may have something to do with the ghost-like feel of my Christmas this year but who knows...I tend to get morbidly ruminative at this time of the year anyway.
One of the hardest things about growing up is the loss of the generations before you. My mother came along late in the program and I came along late as well and that has made for an odd generational off-set in my family. I never knew either of my grandfathers. I barely remember one of my grandmothers and the other died when I was 17 so even those memories are faded now. It feels like I have spent half my life going to funerals. As a child it was great aunts and great uncles and older cousins etc...As a teen and young adult it began to be uncles. Then came the hardest loss of all...both of my parents at 30.
Christmas has not been the same since I lost my mother. I have not been able to re-capture that same sense of familiarity and warmth. Perchance if fate and genetics had played out differently I would have had grandchildren and that would have made it different but that is all a rather mute point now. Not that I have not had lots of love and friends in my life. I have been very blessed in that department. Somehow...despite all my efforts to be weirdly introverted and awkward I have managed to maintain friendships with a pretty wonderful group of people. And I do have a special Piglet in my life but that's a whole different blog right there.
It's not that our Christmases were all that Norman Rockwell brilliance that one sees on the TV. I was a only child but we were always struggling. There was never much spare money around but mom always managed to provide something. I suspect a particular Uncle played Santa Claus more than I ever knew. I would have liked to have known about it and thanked him but my parent's pride would never allow for that sentiment. It was always just the three of us...sometimes Grandma Clayton would be there but mostly it was just the three of us.
We never got a lot of "stuff". Christmas at my house was always more about the yearly replacement of the practical things we needed for the year. We always received the same gifts every year with usually one or two special things. It was that familiarity and routine that I miss with all my heart. Dad would sit and guess at what his presents were with unfailing accuracy made all the more possible because he always got the same thing. Overalls, t-shirts, socks, underwear, red handkerchiefs, a new wallet and if it was time a new watch. Mom always got sleeveless blouses and polyester slacks in various pastel shades. Socks, underwear and bras and usually one special item like a new coat or a new dress for church or a kitchen gadget of some sort. I always got socks, underwear, a new outfit for church, a stuffed animal of some sort and a special toy. It was pretty mundane stuff but I would give my right arm to do it all over again. Despite the angst and the drama and my dad's ill humor I would still love to feel that way again. We would open presents early on Christmas Eve so mom and I could have our new clothes for Midnight Mass and then off we would go to church. It was nothing special but it was mine. I catch glimpses of memories in my mind with certain sounds and images and smells. It's fleeting and ephemeral and I can never seem to hold it. Ghosts.
All of this reminiscing had been brought to you by my experiences this Christmas with a dear friend's elderly parents. When my parents died they kind of "adopted" me as one of their own. At the time I had been friends with their daughter for about 11 years. Now it's been 35 years and the time has flown. They are my back-up parents or my pseudo-parents or my second parents or just the Troll parents. Whatever term I struggle to describe them with to people I meet now. It has been a very interesting relationship. I tease their natural children that I am the "good" daughter. They are very special to me but there is that disconnect there. They treat me as one of their own but I can talk to them differently because I am not their natural child and I don't have all that residual angst in our relationship.
They are 89 now and John has dementia/Alzheimer's which is accelerating at a rapid pace. I was struck this Christmas how being with them was like living with the ghosts of past Christmases and yet dealing with the ghost of the present in that he has no clue who any of us are anymore. I was struck by the idea that we are all like ghosts to him. He carries on and pretends, quite well I might add, that he knows us but he has not a clue. He call his wife of over 60 years by her name but he has no idea who she is to him. He thinks she is someone there to take care of him. I wondered how about how confused he must feel at his children calling him daddy but he has no idea who they are. He obsesses over objects and constantly repeats himself and reads the same thing over and over again. Again...it is like sitting with the ghost of who he once was.
As I was sitting there listening to him drone on and on about a tube of Crest toothpaste I got a sense of the surreal so very strong I almost fled. It was very much like sitting with ghosts. I know that they will not be around much longer but they were sitting right there with me very much alive but it felt like I was looking at their ghosts. It's hard to explain. How do you deal with living people whose spirits seem to have already gone on without their bodies? I still have not processed it all.
What I want to say in my rambling sort of way is be aware of those around you who are struggling. Take a moment to consider all of the thousands of couples like my Troll parents who are battling these issues primarily on their own or within their insular families. Take a moment to check on those elderly neighbors who seem on their own. You don't have to crawl into their lives but just take a second to let them know that you "see" them and make sure they are okay. Recognize that there are those among us living with our own ghosts who need us to remember that they are valued as human beings before they become silent memories.
Amen.
ReplyDeleteNamaste to all the ghosts.