Auld Acquaintance

In December I spend more time than usual visiting my dead, and this December marks the twentieth anniversary of my husband’s death. Each week brings more and more loss. My parents are gone, my aunts and uncles. When I look at photos from my childhood, none of the adults are alive today. Friends and acquaintances make their frequent exits.

Memory remains. I feel a kind of responsibility to make room in my mind for all the people I have lost, to recall them for companionship and advice as I go through my daily activities, simply to spend time thinking about them. I have distilled who they were, rather, who they were for me. I look to them as examples of creativity, leadership, bravery, kindness, intelligence, caring, independence, friendliness–qualities for which I admired or envied them.

I wish I could remember more details. We don’t get to choose what we remember and what we forget. There’s the friend I called at 5 a.m., “Are you up?” after Paul was diagnosed with cancer. There’s the one with whom I would always go to the same Peruvian restaurant and hear fantastic stories about travel and men. There’s the one who let me win at “Words with Friends.” It all seems important to me now, a way to celebrate them.

Death gives new dimension to the phrase, “It’s not fair.” It’s not, but one day our turn will come. For now I am going to work on cherishing everyone a little more.

This Chanukah, may you have much light and much love in your life (Let’s skip the brutal war story please) and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

And

Chanukah wishes from the King