Friday, December 15, 2017

Christmas

I have never before had such a broken heart at Christmas.

I tend to look forward to Christmas all year long.  When I am dealing with hard life stuff in--let's say in late August--I often look forward to Advent.  In the last several years as I have dealt with grief over the loss of my vocation, or the death of my Mother, or a general sense of malaise--I have looked forward to these weeks in December.

This year Christmas keeps ripping the scab off of my soul.

When I was a child,  I never experienced big family Christmases.  My Grandparents were all gone.  My parents were estranged from their brothers and sisters or geographically removed.  My half siblings never came for Christmas Day.

Christmas was about my Mom, Dad, me, and for many years my brother Blake.

When I was young there was almost a ghastly amount of presents.  My Mom was poor as child and my Dad always tried to make it up to her at Christmas.

My Dad's love language was "gift giving."  I know, I know, consumerism is one of the many vices of Christmas, but my Dad made gift giving ebullient.  He would buy so many presents that the bottom of the tree would become invisible. We wouldn't be able to use the front door.  My Mom would receive this packaged love with all the delight of a child.  She would  wake us up at the crack of dawn with a cow bell to open our presents.  She would delight in the jewelry, the art supplies, the underwear.

There were always presents  from Santa, and the cats Fats and Skinny, and from Mom and Dad.
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Three of the last four years my Dad has spent Christmas with us.  Last year it was all sort of desultory.  We were struggling a bit with money.  We were overwhelmed a little by all the new demands of the pastorate.

But, all-in-all, these years were magical--especially Christmas four years ago when my Dad arrived to Chicago by train.  He was in such good spirits!  When he arrived the toddler Sam guided him to the Christmas Tree and he remained for 10 days, making pies, preparing roast beef, shopping for presents, watching endless re-runs of Gilligan's Island and Matlock with Simeon.  It was all so utterly beautiful. Last year had its hiccups, but it ended with a lovely drive along Lake Huron where we made plans to spend the night in Marine City the following Christmas.  There was a little theatre downtown playing "Its a Wonderful Life" and a ferry to Canada.

I can hardly put words to my sense of loss this Christmas!

Earlier this week I attended the funeral of the ideal Mennonite man and Father.  It was beautiful.  He was exemplary.  Yet, in the context of my faith community, I keep struggling for words to describe my Father.   I keep struggling to find a way to describe how loved he always made me feel, how safe!  I struggle to find words to describe how much he loved my Mother.  How his faithful love allowed her to live with a terrifying mental illness.  I struggle to find words to describe the quality of delight that he took--in stories, presents, exploration and novelty.  I have been trained in my faith community to see the love my Dad provide as so fleeting--so many trinkets and baubles, at best as a kind of holding it together despite bad circumstances.  

I would not be able to claim him as the upstanding Gentleman so revered.   Somehow this just makes the grief worse.  I was able to find the words to affirm aggressively what my Mother meant to me--some how I cannot find the right words for my Father.

I do not know how to speak adequately of either my love or my grief.

I enter his Advent genuinely needing something that I cannot provide for myself.  Needing something that I am not entirely sure that my heart can bear.