Something has happened that really rocked my Christmas spirit.
I confess, I'm not a huge fan of Christmas. I enjoy the holiday season - the sense of celebration, good food, Christmas lights - but in most ways I'm a minimalist. I don't bake much, don't decorate until a very few days before Christmas, decoration is limited to a tree and some simple stuff in the living room, a string of lights outside. Presents are fun, and I really enjoy Christmas dinner at my parents, as well as spending time with friends and eating their Christmas baking. Growing up, Christ's birthday was surrounded by family birthdays; my dad and brother share December 17, my birthday is December 31, my mother's is January 11. So it's definitely a festive season for me.
What's interrupted the usual progression is a death. Not immediate family, not even anyone I had met, but someone else's daughter, a very kind someone else I know via a shared interest - house rabbits - and e-mail list membership. Ten days ago her only child, her 24-year old daughter, became ill with what seemed to be a simple UTI but was apparently an MRSA infection which within about 24-hours went system-wide, reaching and damaging her brain. On December 11, she abruptly lapsed into a coma from which she never emerged. She died early afternoon on December 20.
Like everyone who knew about this, I prayed for a cure, for recovery, for a miracle, and finally, for a swift and painless passage into death.
This particular mindless malevolence of fate and coincidence is REALLY hard for me to reconcile with celebrating birth and a general good will, and I'm barely brushed by this experience. All I can think is how devastating this must be for her parents, family, friends who until two weeks ago could reasonably have expected her to be on this earth for another sixty years, now faced with burying her just before Christmas.
Yes, I know; hug my kids, be thankful for my own kith and kin, be more appreciative, make more of my own life. Stop worrying so much about bills, spend more time doing useful/interesting/fun things. Value what I have more; appreciate how frail and precious is this life of ours, how quickly overset by circumstance.
And life, of course, goes on, for the rest of us. Somehow, that saving grace seems the bitterest irony.
