o night divine

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

***

this is the first verse of a song that my father and his four brothers sang years ago at christmas, when my parents lived up north. they stood in the dining room, jed wearing a santa hat, and they all sang.

i don't know that they'll ever all sing together again. jed is learning to talk again, and walk, but in my heart i doubt that there will be a miracle that will allow him to return to minnesota or sing again, like they did that christmas.

everything is making me weepy. i'm having trouble digging up the spirit to keep a smile on my face. all i keep thinking of is the boys, happily singing that song.

fall on your knees--oh hear the angel voices. jed got down on one knee, i remember.

so many years ago. grandpa w was gone by that time, but grandma margaret was still there. this year she won't be, either. no matter how much i bitched and moaned about taking her to church--she could be a little whiskey-scented rascal--i will miss it this year.

i want to linger in my house today, i want to curl up in the bathtub and emerge sometime in march. hell, i'm not sure i ever want to emerge. it's not going to be a glorious emergence, like the bright butterfly unfurling from the cocoon. it's just going to be mundane and boring--my skin will be all pruned from sitting too long in water, and my hair will be wet and dry and scraggly.

i am trying to muster spirit for this weekend. i'm trying to buoy myself up--thinking of the glee of dan's nephews, opening gifts. thinking of the hotel with the large bed. of sharing cookies and hugs, of relating stories and watching the children grow before your eyes.

and then i think of my father--in a strange way, orphanned for christmas. i think of cari, motherless. i think of dan in pain, i think of eero lonely, i think of serena, isolated by her own hand.

i think of my uncle jed, still trying despite such hardship, still smiling and still laughing--and i think of his inner gourmand being unable to taste the food at any table, unable to swallow, fed by a plastic shunt.

i think of my self--the stakes holding my tent down, tugged free by the winds. i am bare as a babe on wet stony ground, overwhelmed by the sky.

my thoughts roll down the hill, into the swampy area at the bottom--dark and misty and dank. you have to coax with words. you have to offer verbal bribes back up the hill. you have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, by which to find your way.

***

when i was a kid and we stayed at grandma and grandpa's house in the far, far north, we always slept in the room with the angel picture, in a gold frame. i don't know who painted it. all i know is that it now hangs in my parents' house, and you'll recognize it when you see it.

i'm not a believer in winged angels, or cherubs, or saints. i believe in spirit, that the 21 grams of your soul has to go somewhere, when you pass, and that you share that weight with others every day. sometimes they carry that weight for you, until you can pick it up again, and sometimes you do the same for them. we are all the caretakers of each others' souls.

i believed, when i was a kid, that the picture on their wall kept me safe in the night. that my progress was witnessed. that even if i do not feel as though i have shared or burdened others with the carrying of my soul, generous hands are held above me as i pass over dark bridges.

this year for me has been a dark bridge. this year has been filled with bright stars in the sky and some days of unsurpassed joy, but it has also been a time of pain and a time of darkness, for me.

i think of depression as the dark night of the soul. as me, lingering on that dark bridge, no candle to light my way, just one scared child in the black.

i think of my uncles, singing that song--o holy night.

this feeling being lost, of not hearing the searchers call your name--this sorrowing of soul is just as holy and just as beautiful as joy.

it is difficult to honor that feeling, in your self or in others. i get impatient when faced with it--in me or in dan or in anyone else. i want to turn on the lights and flood the indecision, scare the pain back into shadows.

but the darkness in which i linger is just as filled with light as i allow it to be. i can turn on the lights, just a little, like nightlights. i can cross the bridge. i can still be in the dark--and that can be just fine.

i have to search out the searchers. i have to learn the woods of my soul until the dark no longer matters. i have to know my self. the pattern of my forest is not that dissimilar from dark areas in which others pace. i have to keep that in mind.

today the road twists and turns, feels insurmountable beneath my feet. fog so close that i cannot see the end of my nose. if i keep walking forward, perhaps i will learn to call this night, this year, this life--holy.