Christmas Meme / Christmas Funk

This will NOT be the meme I had intended.

My blogger pal Jaquandor is always good for a meme. He put up a fun Christmas meme on his blog and I thought I'd post my own version here. After all, he says he tags EVERYBODY and that includes me, right?

I made several attempts at putting in my answers. However, each time I tried, it would just complicate my already swirling funk.

First question: Favorite traditional Christmas song:Sure, I could just name off a few songs. I DO like some of 'em. "Do You See What I See" comes to mind. But the very thought of Christmas music also brings me precariously close to the mental / emotional turmoil I've been avoiding.

Dec 16 was the anniversary of my father's death. In a few days (Dec 21) will be the anniversary of my mother's. They both died suddenly and unexpectedly (him of heart failure while asleep in bed, her during a heart bypass surgery that was supposed to be serious but routine) in 1983. Granted, that was a long time ago. But as anyone who has lost people close to them knows, the years can telescope on you in a heartbeat, bringing distant losses rushing back to feel like present wounds.

My parents had divorced when I was about 13, lived in different towns, both had remarried and hadn't spoken to each other for several years. But they dropped dead with no warning in the very same week when I was just 26. Their deaths collided with the Christmas season, wrapping all the emotions of grief and loss around every tinsel, every cookie, every tune.

Mostly I've dealt with the bereavement as much as can be expected. Face it, true grief is not like a cold that you can get over. It's more like an amputation - something that changes you forever. You accommodate it and learn to move forward in the new reality, but it never goes back to how it used to be. So, in that sense, I have come to terms with it. But every Christmas season there are so many reminders of the wound...the sights, the sounds, the smells all haunt me. Every fa la la la la brings up images of my mother's dead face in her casket. Every freaking time I hear a Salvation Army bell ringer I get mini-flashes of my father - pictures in my brain I DO NOT WANT.

This is all the more crazy making because I did NOT have good relations with my parents. So much anger and guilt, hurt feelings and trapped love were tangled up with shame and longing in those relationships. Somehow I used to believe that EVENTUALLY we'd resolve some of the ugliness and learn to be more honest and supportive of one another, the way I believed families were SUPPOSED to be. Truth is, had they lived to be the age of Methuselah I doubt we ever could have repaired the breach. Our family was so fractured by so many things...all the kings horses and all the kings men could never have put those relationships together again. But as long as they were alive I still had the hope that someday MAYBE it could be made right. Now it never can.

So all I am left with is something like the smell of a campfire that has been doused with water...burned out, muddy mess...cold, offering no solace.

Christmas can be a tough time for me. I have my good days where I get pretty close to being able to feel the joy of the season. And I have my bad days where it is all one excruciating nightmare. Paying focused attention to the specific triggers of Christmas just doesn't seem in my best interest right now. So I think I'll pass.

Over on Waters of Mormon, one of the other blogs I contribute to, Starfoxy came up with this to say about the Christmas season:

"In the past I've taken cues from my parents and bemoaned the commercialization of Christmas. I've lamented how quickly the birth of Christ is forgotten among the gifts and festivities.

These days, however, I'm seriously considering cutting my losses and completely separating my recognition of Christ's birth from the midwinter celebrations.

December is an intense month. There are various holidays, traditions, and parties to attend to. For the students there are midterms, or final exams. For the employed there are year end reports, filings, and meetings. There are preparations for next year to take into account. The weather frequently turns difficult. Most people travel to spend time with family. At the end of the month many find themselves physically and emotionally exhausted. And amongst all of that we're supposed to find time for meaningful reflection on Christ's birth, life and resurrection. I can't muster up and surprise that it all too frequently just doesn't happen.

So why not just buckle down and make it happen? Why not make time for that meaningful reflection. Why can't I ditch the parties? Why shouldn't I spend hours training my kids to understand that Santa and rudolf weren't at the stable? Why can't I just push, shove, pull, wrangle, wrestle and cajole my family into feeling the peace, joy and comfort of contemplating the Condescension of God?

Here's my reasoning- Santa, Rudolf, Christmas Trees, gifts, and parties are going hold my kid's attention no matter what I do. They're going to hear it at school, from their friends, in the stores, and on TV. People will demand my attention work and service whether they should or not. I will feel stress, and fatigue. My children will probably be like me- itching to open presents so bad that they can barely sit still long enough to listen to the first half of Luke 2. Why even try to pair the love of Christ with the clamor of modern day Christmases and hope that I can shout louder than everyone else?

Instead I plan for Christmas becomes a time for parties, togetherness, gifts, service, and sharing. And then on the 12th day of Christmas, January 6th, or the day of Epiphany I will, quietly, peacefully and deliberately celebrate the birth and childhood of Christ. After the decorations are put away, the presents have lost some of their sparkle, and just before things get back to normal I will put aside time to teach my children about the miracle of Christ's birth."

As I responded to her there, I have misgivings about capitulating to the mayhem.
The only thing that I can hang on to that is GOOD about Christmas is my focus on the Savior. That part still sustains me. It's all the rest of it that I want to hide my head in the sand and run away from.

Mortality

Singer and songwriter Dan Fogleberg died on Sunday. His music was a major part of my world during the 70's & 80's.

As I get older it is becoming increasingly frequent that people I know, or know of, are crossing over to the other side.

George Bernard Shaw once said: "Life does not cease to be serious when people laugh. Neither does it cease to be funny when people die." I suppose that's true. But I cannot help but feel a bit sad at the loss of this lyricist whose words touched my heart over the years. Go swiftly Dan. May your memory be eternal.

The Sky is Falling!

Well it looks like Chicken Little is not the only one who thinks the sky is falling.

I just read the report of the meteor that fell on Peru, causing more than 600 people to become ill. Strange that this should occur just as I was finishing up the book "Hammer of God" by Arthur C Clarke about the possibility of an asteroid falling to earth.

There is a pretty amazing (although not very scientific) YouTube video of a meteor fall HERE

Movies like Night of the Comet (1984) and Deep Impact ( 1998) have sensationalized what might happen to the earth if some big hunk of rock from the sky came calling. The special effects guys were more interested in movie ratings than scientific accuracy, but it's not beyond the reach of imagination to think of some celestial body crashing through our atmosphere and wreaking havoc. Having grown up in Arizona, one of my most memorable school field trips was to visit Meteor Crater near Flagstaff when I was in the 8th grade. Of course, that one came down before people had populated nearly every region of the planet.

A few weeks ago my beloved and I layed out on the lawn late one night curled up in blankets into the wee hours of the morning watching an amazing meteor shower. They are pretty when up in the sky and something romantics hang a wish on.

But it would be a whole different matter if they came down here.

The science of "Hammer of God" was interesting enough, but I was more intrigued by the sociology that Clarke proposed. How would people on earth react if they knew scientists had discovered a huge object on a collision course with our planet that was due to hit us in 1 year or 10 years or 100 years?

Clarke wrote of mass panics and suicides. He wrote of governments having to implement marshall law. He wrote of the scientists scrambling to avert the catastrophe. At one point in the novel, it becomes apparent that there is no way that the scientific teams aboard the vessel that are setting out to change the meteor's course will be able to escape. It's interesting to watch how the various characters respond to that news.

I compare that to what we know of the actions of the folks aboard the Titanic.

I can't help but wonder how I would react if I had word of my eminent doom. None of us are getting out of this world alive, we all know that. But there is something about the great uncertainty of our length of days that keeps us scrambling forward.

What would I do if I KNEW my life, or the whole world was about to end? What if I had a date that was a week away or a year away? How would I spend that time?

Perhaps more importantly, what AM I doing NOW so that I'll be ready to meet my maker whenever it does come?

I can only imagine what those Peruvian people must have thought when they saw a ball of fire approaching out of the sky. It would be interesting to carry on a long range cultural study to see what sorts of legends, folklore and other cultural responses there may be over the next 50 years in response to this.

Thanantology

My blogger pal Joel asked in a post comment about the course in Death & Dying that I used to teach. I started to just fire off an e-mail to answer his questions, but decided I'd go ahead and post my reply about it here.

Thanantology is the study of death and dying. About a dozen years ago I taught a course in Death and Dying for a couple terms at a community college in Michigan. Then I taught it again as a special topics seminar at my old Alma mater, Western Michigan University. I did quite a bit of research in preparation for the course. I volunteered with hospice. I got to know a homicide detective pretty well. I went out with a coroner's assistant to the scene of a deceased man to investigate cause and legally declare the person dead. I hung out in funeral homes a lot. I researched cross-cultural traditions related to death. I attended workshops and read A LOT of books.

In my class we talked about all sorts of things - from violent death to pet death to SIDS. We discussed the businesses that profit from death. We had speaker panels - a man who had lost his partner to HIV/AIDS, a woman whose teen aged daughter had been killed by a drunk driver, a guy whose dad had committed suicide.

My students all had to write their own obituaries and plan whatever form of body disposal & service they wanted. We had field trips to cemeteries and funeral homes. We talked a lot about how death adds meaning to life.

But no matter how much research I may have done, no matter how many books on the subject I read - nothing really prepares your heart for letting go of those we love.

When I was in my early 20's my parents both died. Although divorced for over five years and completely out of contact with each other they died the very same week. My mother was 53. My father was 55. Both deaths were sudden and completely unexpected.

In 2000 my stepdaughter, Stacy, died of cancer. She was 25. That wound still stings my soul in ways I can scarcely name.

Some years before that my beloved sister-in-law, Donna, also died of cancer. That loss was savage business that robbed every one who ever knew her of a very special spirit.

I worked for a while doing HIV/AIDS intervention work, and through that job got to know several people who were in their final stages of life.

Then a couple years ago I lost four different people dear to me over a six month span. With that cluster of grief I learned something that all the study in the world could never teach.

Dealing with death is different from just about every other experience in that it doesn't get better or easier with practice. If I throw a ball or play a flute or cut stained glass long enough, over time I get better at it. I build skill sets that create a level of proficiency in place of early bumbling attempts or mediocrity. Do a deed over and over and over again long enough and you WILL get better. But it doesn't work that way with letting go of those we love.

My experience has been that grief piggy backs. When I have a new loss, it triggers many of the old emotions from former letting go episodes to come tumbling out again, so that I end up confronting stacks of sorrow, piles of pain. Each new repose serves as a reminder of what I've not entirely resolved in the earlier losses. Also, knowing lots about the dynamics of grief, even being called a "trained expert" by some, in no way gets me off the hook from my own breaking heart.

Right now both of my older brothers' wives are facing the approaching deaths of their mothers. While I don't know those women well I DO know and care deeply for my sisters-in-law whose lives are reeling from the events that are unfolding. Also a co-worker of mine just lost her son, and is at this time feeling utterly desolate over that. In my church family there are people who are seriously ill whose lives may be short. Compound that with the fact that nearly every week we hear of losses of soldiers in far away lands...it all piles up to taunt me with how pervasive death is in this fallen mortal world.

Because of my religious faith I truly do believe in a life after death and I am confidant that the next phase of our eternal progression will be an amazing, wonderful thing. Still, I kick against death - recoil from its approach among those I know and love.

Yet I recognize that LIFE is terminal. Ain't none of us gettin' out of here alive. We are all dying from the moment we first take breath. It's just that some people get some warning in the form of a diabolical diagnosis and a message from doctors to put affairs in order while others, like my parents, meet death like a thief in the night.

Life is precious to us primarily BECAUSE we know it is a limited commodity. If I've learned anything from the precious time I've spent among those who were terminally ill it is to respect life every moment that we have of it, drink it in deep, appreciate it and say what we really mean. Life is too short for posing, hypocrisy, unkindness or lies.

Also I've learned that there never was a hearse with a U-haul trailer full of stuff attached. In the end, the shiny things just get passed on or sold in a tag sale.

Death is one of the great mysteries. No matter how strong my faith in the here after, there is no way to really KNOW what death will bring until it's actually my turn. As I get closer with each passing year to the age my parents were when they crossed over, I've thought quite a bit about what life and death mean to me.

Mostly I want to live my life with as much passion, compassion, and humor as I can muster, hoping to build some integrity along the way. Whenever my time does come, I want to leave behind lots of people who knew they were very well loved, and hopefully be remembered with more laughter than tears.