Christmas 2015

Christmas Eve; the morning has fallen out of the night with a deluge of rain.  Wind is pushing untethered objects around the garden and the gutters are discharging their contents with noisy splashing;  I suspect this year will be remembered for the flooding and unseasonably warm weather.
Christmas eve - surely a day to be roasting chestnuts on an open fire, not scurrying down to the Coop with a waterproof hood flopping over your head.

So this is Christmas

And what have you done

Another year over

And a new one just begun

Indeed.  A reconfigured Christmas, a variation on the usual confusion about precisely what we expect this festival to offer.  I have the children here - this ticks the 'family' box very confidently - and it is both lovely and exposing to have them here; exposing in the sense that we are thrust into a recognition of Karin's absence.  Emotions, feelings and positions are pushed to the fore.  

I have a sense of rebalance of roles - the bits that Karin contributed to family events are either taken up by someone else or discarded. The day has a different smell about it.  Of course all Christmasses are bound to be different but this one has much more - like looking round a corner.

 It's all very well talking about how things can be different, but there is so much change that there feels like nothing stable to act as an anchor.  It feels more like I am floating around; no expectation, no framework in which to place myself.  It is as if the floods outside have engulfed me so I am supported all the way round by water - but nothing solid to push against.  I must find my rocks, the constants.  My main rock isn't here now, so I need to identify the other ones that provide a stability, enabling me to keep moving forward.  Certain people, running, cycling, the woods on the hill, the house - a man needs a hearth.  And an established time for solitary reflection - a newly recognised comfort for me.  Push against these things to set off into the water.

Kain said last year that she was pretty confident that it would be her last Christmas.  How does anyone process the enormity of that statement?  How on earth did she process each landmark as they approached?  Her fortitude in recognising and accepting her situation became a characteristic of the last two years, and I don't know if I could have achieved the same if I was in her position.  

Nick told a story at the funeral of Karin laying cards out in a line to map out major events in the future and she was clear and accepting of the shortness of the timeline: quite calm.  I wonder what the other people in the group felt about this unequivocal and brutally functional statement.  How honest; and in that honesty, what a gift for the others to be made aware of the fleeting flash of life.

A gift then, a legacy.  The knowing that for each of us the future doesn't stretch forward for ever; it is framed at either end by a birth and a death, and this section of time itself is a tiny, measureable piece.  To me this feels easy to say but difficult to feel or understand;  Karin had the wisdom of knowing, really knowing, and gave us a little of this understanding.  What better time to receive a gift than at Christmas?

So, I start to identify new understandings, new anchors; objects to push against.  A new one is knowing how long I have - like all of us it isn't long and it is finite.  Having established that as a certainty I can see a little more of the picture through the sheeting rain and swirling waters that threaten to destabilise our lives and our thinking.

One more gift, as a post-script.  Laughter.  I am sure there is more to be written on this, but how to find joy in what you have is another lesson freely given to us by Karin.