This is the scene: I am in a crowded department store next to a woman and two teenage daughters. The woman has on a ball cap and looks as if she might be undergoing chemotherapy. One daughter, I’m unsure which one, is trying unsuccessfully to buy shoes. The young girl, slouched resentfully in the department store chair, talks back to her mom, and the mom looks apologetically at me, whispering, “Merry Christmas.”
I smile. There is an understanding in her eyes that she cannot communicate to her impatient daughters, but I get it.
My heart is with her. The holidays can be so much less than we hope. Because I miss my own child so desperately, I long for the opportunity to be in a crowded mall with him, even if he is only slouched in a chair, disinterested.
Almost everything about the past year and a half makes me believe that we, he and I, are both wiser now, even though he is no longer physically present, and that he would not be disinterested, nor would I be frustrated. At the expense of seeming simple-minded or worse, I believe my son is, as the holidays have promised, a part of an eternal light and is—somewhere—wise enough now to know what I have come to understand: Nothing matters more than love.
The holidays, from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, are traditionally a time of reflection. Even if we do not participate in Advent or Hanukkah or any other formal time of assessment, we are forced by the traditions of those around us to reflect: How are our life views different from our neighbors’ or from the girl’s in the chair at the mall?
And even though I no longer believe that the end of our lives on earth marks the end of our learning and our love--even though I no longer have a simmering existential anger about not having enough clues to figure out what we are supposed to be doing here--I recognize that others hold many diverse beliefs. For those who believe this life is all we get, isn’t the present moment then all the more important?
I want to tell the girl in the chair that all of this could be different for her, but instead, I turn away, take a breath, and refrain from saying we will not always have those we love—at the holidays or other times.
I think we never have all the answers, and the ones we do have are the result of our individual experiences and, in most cases, non-transferrable. By the time we come to the understanding that there is no time to waste being disrespectful or dismissive, we often simply want to start over—be a wiser person, behave in more functional and uplifting ways. What a different child, parent, or friend we could be after we have been taught by life.
The natural cycles of the earth indicate that we do get another chance. Following the winter solstice, days become longer, and the year symbolically begins again…tomorrow.
Julia Gregg is a writer, teacher and consultant who can be reached at Julia.Gregg1950@gmail.com.