Sad Christmas

Can you remember, I asked her, a Christmas that wasn't sad?

No, every Christmas in memory has some sadness. Christmas is a time when we are faced with the absence of prominent loves. It is dark and cold, with a relentless unforgiving warmth, wishing you cheer.

Today's sadness tinges even the happiest memories, nothing lays untouched—grief's kingdom is the sun itself, all the light touches as well as the shadows it casts.

Yes, never forget, a shadow is not a thing, it is a casting, a spell of the light and the obstruction, still not a true darkness.

The dark Nothing would seem to be grief but it is love. Endless, terrifying, all consuming, all producing. Truly infinite in its workings.

It is in the light of grief, and her shadows, that we see what love has produced from nothing, from darkness, from everything.

It is grief that is blinding, darkness that comforts with a stable equanimous embrace. The shade is a refuge; too much direct grief is damaging.

It is grief that burns hot, grief that reveals cold, while the darkness is no temperature at all, like my blood seems to be.

The darkness is where love churns, and the light is where we live our human lives, fooled enough to fear the dark.

Humanly, we move toward the light, stringing it along houses and through trees, knowing ourselves by it, learning every way we might be. Feeling every way we might feel.