Though I have lived through dozens of Christmases, it crossed my mind this year that I don't remember any of them very well. When I think of Christmas, I remember the one when I was 4 years old the most clearly, though by now so much of my life feels like a dream, that the dreamlike quality of that Christmas is not so much a stand alone memory.
The one thing I don't look forward to about dementia is living in the distant past. If I had experienced a Norman Rockwell childhood, it could be a good way to wind up, but I'm developing a minor horror of spending the end of life thinking I'm back at my beginnings, though I suppose it is possible that there are some good experiences back there that I have selectively forgotten because they didn't fit the narrative I had decided to create to fit how it felt.
That year though, was the last year I had a family, and a home and a sense of those things being real. My father was a lover of Christmas, my mother couldn't have hated it more if it had included anal rehydration. Dad got a big tree, and the stairway in that big house wound up and around the tree to the top floor. There never was such a tree, I couldn't get enough of it, I wanted to sleep under it, and that year I tried to. It was the last year I was convinced that Santa Claus was a real human person, and though suspicions were gaining on faith, the tree seemed like a good place to wait for him to come and drink the bourbon and eat the cookies we had left for him. That Christmas is probably the one I have tried to get a piece of again every year since, and it is not just elusive. It never existed. Underneath what I remember, was a couple of people who couldn't believe the situation they had chained themselves to, drinking to bury the pain of it and working hard to convince anyone who might be looking that things were fine.
We were Unitarians at that time, and that was the year I asked my mother if the church ever talked about Jesus. "Only if they're falling down stairs" she replied.
I suppose a 4 year old can't be expected to understand that the way one approaches one's life has an effect or that the decisions made in the face of life have consequences, or that caring about other people or listening to them is more than just getting the hell out of the way and making yourself scarce, but I remember a longing for meaning.
So much of what happens at this time of year strikes me as reaction to unexamined memory instead creating an experience or taking an action based on a response to reality. The return of more light whether it looks like turning towards summer a few seconds at a time or the idea that there was a human incarnation of consciousness, love, unity, acceptance and forgiveness, it runs like a thread through the ritual of this season.
The contrast of how the season is represented and how it is experienced is a stark lesson every year of how to deal with the ways in which we are disappointments to ourselves. We are always at the end, we are always at the beginning, nothing is repeated, no one needs to be held to account, no wishes need to be fulfilled, no scores settled, no certain results. But it helps if it is possible to notice what is going on, if it isn't possible to be generous, maybe it's possible to be restrained, if it's not possible to give, maybe it's possible to not to take.
The one thing I don't look forward to about dementia is living in the distant past. If I had experienced a Norman Rockwell childhood, it could be a good way to wind up, but I'm developing a minor horror of spending the end of life thinking I'm back at my beginnings, though I suppose it is possible that there are some good experiences back there that I have selectively forgotten because they didn't fit the narrative I had decided to create to fit how it felt.
That year though, was the last year I had a family, and a home and a sense of those things being real. My father was a lover of Christmas, my mother couldn't have hated it more if it had included anal rehydration. Dad got a big tree, and the stairway in that big house wound up and around the tree to the top floor. There never was such a tree, I couldn't get enough of it, I wanted to sleep under it, and that year I tried to. It was the last year I was convinced that Santa Claus was a real human person, and though suspicions were gaining on faith, the tree seemed like a good place to wait for him to come and drink the bourbon and eat the cookies we had left for him. That Christmas is probably the one I have tried to get a piece of again every year since, and it is not just elusive. It never existed. Underneath what I remember, was a couple of people who couldn't believe the situation they had chained themselves to, drinking to bury the pain of it and working hard to convince anyone who might be looking that things were fine.
We were Unitarians at that time, and that was the year I asked my mother if the church ever talked about Jesus. "Only if they're falling down stairs" she replied.
I suppose a 4 year old can't be expected to understand that the way one approaches one's life has an effect or that the decisions made in the face of life have consequences, or that caring about other people or listening to them is more than just getting the hell out of the way and making yourself scarce, but I remember a longing for meaning.
So much of what happens at this time of year strikes me as reaction to unexamined memory instead creating an experience or taking an action based on a response to reality. The return of more light whether it looks like turning towards summer a few seconds at a time or the idea that there was a human incarnation of consciousness, love, unity, acceptance and forgiveness, it runs like a thread through the ritual of this season.
The contrast of how the season is represented and how it is experienced is a stark lesson every year of how to deal with the ways in which we are disappointments to ourselves. We are always at the end, we are always at the beginning, nothing is repeated, no one needs to be held to account, no wishes need to be fulfilled, no scores settled, no certain results. But it helps if it is possible to notice what is going on, if it isn't possible to be generous, maybe it's possible to be restrained, if it's not possible to give, maybe it's possible to not to take.
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