Light the Way
Checks time.
6:21 pm.
Looks outside.
It’s like midnight.
Friend of mine sent pictures of her living room; candles lit, Christmas lights turned on. We talk while drinking Backhouse Pinot Noir; I dropped off two bottles from an online order last week. I drink the last of mine, asking myself how much is too much.
Outside, the darkness continues.
In the before, I can’t stand the word ‘normal,’ I would head to someone’s place to hang out. Not happening at the moment. Springs Church wants to appeal its fines, and I feel loads angry. My sentences get short, my emotions feel shorter, and it’s dark outside.
Light comes behind me from my kitchen while my computer gives off its glow. It feels just as dark now as it did at 6 am. It’s a relentless dark. Darkness magnifies the losses; my parents' passing runs together now, one over a year but the other around the 8-month mark.
Around this time last year, my underwater brain would finish the term, knowing the last day of classes would mean two weeks of being with dad for the whole time. It dawned on me (ha!) everything got shoved aside for the sake of whatever normal for dad. Looking back, he made up his mind.
O fim.
O fim.
O fim, he would say.
“That’s a conversation you need to have with God,” I would say, and now I know it’s my denial speaking. Dad would greet the light, the wondrous light of whatever comes next. Mom calmly met her diagnosis, knowing she would meet the next. I don’t have that calm.
There’s so much I want to do, and I don’t want to catch this thing; I don’t want anyone else to catch this thing either, knowing they have so much this want to do. Lately, I have wondered about the wondrous light about the next. The place promising no tears and maybe a jam session with Bing Crosby, David Bowie, and Prince. Everyone would sit on blankets as if the next were the Winnipeg Folk Fest, the Jazz Fest, and all the fests rolled the one making up for what was cancelled.
My parents would attend, and I wondered if they got to see concerts and catch up with friends. Would my mom see her friend who ended up in one of those horrible Quebec nursing homes in the before. When I heard she died, I wondered if she thought ‘Carmelia had the right idea. Why not go?’
Any place is better than here, but then I remembered things here are unfinished. I have more living to do, grief, grief and winter darkness and a pandemic. My thought wandering all over the place, but the digression into the wondrous next makes my heart glow for my parents.
I grab onto the light of memory, my mother wiping away the tears while translating a question: What medications do you want to give up. The finality of the question, those pills were her rhythm, and now it will come to an end. It’s really happening, and mom wiped my tears, telling me I need to live my life, the phrase she used translated in my head as ‘take care of your things.’
I am trying, mom, I am really trying.
The night covers me like an unwanted blanket. I strain my eyes looking for the light, walking in darkness and waiting for this great light. It takes time. That’s my light. Time lights itself like a candle. December 21 will happen, and slowly a little bit of light comes back.
Patience, hope, time.
Maybe those are my advent candles handling the seasons of grief.
