Once upon a time in the land of make-believe, guts and grit saved the day. Odds against accomplishing the mission stacked high enough to abolish any thoughts of success. Not to worry. Fiction writers yanked those boot straps, reducing the negative to dust. Mighty Mouse saved the day.
Christmas can be like that Mission Impossible. We play the music. We serve up the sentiments, act our role, play our part. Deck the halls, make the food, arrange the beds, think the perfect gift scenario for about 11 months a year.
This time the odds against are the reality of baggage borne through years of silence, festered anger, magnified slights, painful memories. This time there is the look and feel of grungy reality TV , every one lives but no one wins.
That expression about ‘limp with resignation’ is on the menu board today. Remember that prayer line I like so much…”forgiveness…for what I have done and what I have failed to do”…? I have that thought every day and November 29 marks the day that I accept that forgiveness will never happen. Won’t? Can’t? Does not matter. The result is the same. A plastic pink Christmas tree trumps boughs of green and growing holly.
If you are a Gentle Reader visiting this blog regularly, you know that death visited five weeks ago. You know that grief invades with zero tolerance for hopes or dreams or myths. Death cuts that swath so well described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Death makes us impotent and raging with anger at that impotence. Death vomits up the mass that has choked and been swallowed.
No new beginnings. No phony fits and starts towards understanding or acceptance. No forgiveness. The year that Christmas did not happen? Feels that way…a deep and empty hollow place suffocating under the weight of that ugly pink plastic.