Blue Christmas

This Holiday season, more so than in the recent past, is tinged with sadness for me. I don't know if it's the fact that it's the twenty fourth anniversary of my brother's death at age 24, my perimenopausal hormones, or maybe now that my kids are bigger, I finally have time and space for these feelings. Probably all of the above is the right answer.

I was very moved by this post from Mel about "tertiary mourners". Tertiary mourners are essentially strangers, people in the blogosphere or acquaintances, who abide and support people they really don't know.

I am tertiary mourner and feel genuine caring and connection. To mourn alongside someone whether they are close in distance or relationship doesn't matter to me. I honor our common humanity, offering a hand, a small gesture of comfort in dark times, the "kindness of strangers" as Mr.Tennessee Williams put it. It is a privilege and honor I do not take lightly, but I give freely.

The first time I was a recipient of tertiary mourning was twenty four years ago when 35 of my college classmates signed a sympathy card for the death of my brother and mailed it to my home. My parents and I were incredibly moved, still are even after all this time.

Thank you, dear bloggy buddies who have been my tertiary mourners also. You are supportive of my losses and sadness. You give me a safe place to lay my burden.

I think tertiary mourners are the Greek Chorus of our tragedy, our comedy too.

I have made a decision this year that I am not going to repress my feelings of sadness or grief. I will give them the light and attention they deserve and are due.

Here are two poems about Death that bring me peace.

Gone From My Sight
by Henry Van Dyke

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone"

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.
And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"

And that is dying...

Death Is Nothing At All
by Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918),
Canon of St.Paul´s Cathedral

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room,
I am I and you are you,
Whatever we were to each other, that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used,
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow,
Laugh as we always laughed,
At the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect,
Without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant,
It is the same that it ever was.
There is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind,
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval,
Somewhere very near,
Just around the corner, all is well