The Coming of Christmas

While I did well with Thanksgiving, I am not sure how I will do for Christmas.

All around me are the beginning signs of Christmas, some since before Halloween. Christmas carols 24/7 on the radio, stores are decorated, lamp posts bewreathed, city Christmas trees waiting for their lighting ceremonies.

But, at least for now, instead of beginning to feel the spirit (and the spirit usually does infect me) I am feeling an emptiness. The emptiness is in the air around me, in the space of the condo, along when I am driving, and filling my heart and emotions. Interesting, emptiness filling me?

For 40 years the most important holiday for Gregory and me has been Christmas. Celebrated with family, celebrated with friends, celebrated just the two of us. Unpacking the tree and ornaments, baking cookies, making hot chocolate, entertaining gifts, giving gifts not only to each other but also to family, friends, service providers, store keepers.

So I sit with my grief, sit with my suffering, sit with my tears and when they settle down get up and get on with my life.

I have decided that I do not want to unpack all the decorations. Too many emotions. So I will unpack just a few of them.

The three foot artificial tree that we have been using for years will sit in front of the living room windows. It is already strung with lights and antique glass German ornaments and waiting to come out of the box where it sits since last year. All I need to do is feather dust the dust and plug it in.

I have five antique brush trees which are approximately 6" tall and wrapped, spiraling top to bottom, with a garland of miniature glass balls. They will sit on the "Changing Collection" shelf in the entrance hall. I'll post a photo when I get them in place.

I might put the wreath on the front door and I might put a smaller artificial tree with lights and bangle baubles on the bookcase that runs the length of the bedroom.

I will make Great Grandma Barbara's German Christmas Cookies, a family tradition going back well over one hundred years to Gregory's mother's father's mother. If you can count that high. But this year, I will not make dozens and dozens of dozens types of cookies. Oh, in thinking, maybe I will make G and my favorite Adeline's Walnut Balls (in vanilla and chocolate.)

What I will most likely do is create some new traditions for myself and see if that helps me through the search.

Today, the day after Thanksgiving, I will take a newly purchased 18" tall plastic tree to Lieberman and Gregory and I will decorate it for his room. We will "twist tie" the ornaments and garland in place so they do not "disappear."

Gregory and I have thought about this in the past and this year I will follow through for both of us on getting $100.00 in singles and passing them out to every person I pass who has set up their "begging bowl."

I promised Vivian, a resident-mate of Gregory's, that if her family didn't bring her a little Christmas tree for her room, I would do it.

As a Christmas/Hannukah thank you to the Lieberman departments, I will drop off bowls of wrapped Christmas peppermint balls and dreidels with a sign that says, "Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanza, Happy New Years, Happy Winter."

For New Years I will offer wrapped Chinese Fortune Cookies in a bowl with a sign that says, "Wishing you Good Fortune in the New Year."

I will see what other "traditions" I can come up with and let you know as the season proceeds. I put the word "traditions" in quotes because I have been accused of the following quote: THE BEST TRADITIONS ARE THE NEW ONES YOU CREATE TODAY!

Wooden Ornament, made by friends Jan and Jake

Given to us in 1987 when we moved into the first
house we purchased 27 years ago.

Emptiness

This article makes me feel only a little better but when I fell "empty" I equate it with "sad." It discusses emptiness as "an infinitely open space that allows for anything to appear, change, disappear, and reappear. The basic meaning of emptiness, in other words, is openness, or potential." and for the most part, that makes me feel sad. Alzheimer's does that! It helps you focus on the negative rather than the positive. I have been working on changing that for a long time now. Sometimes it works, other times it doesn't.

 Shambhala Publications

THE MEANING OF EMPTINESS

—Tsoknyi Rinpoche, from The Best Buddhist Writing 2013 http://www.shambhala.com/the-best-buddhist-writing-2015.html

“Emptiness” is a rough translation of the Sanskrit term shunyata and the Tibetan term tongpa-nyi. The basic meaning of the Sanskrit word shunya is “zero,” while the Tibetan word tongpa means “empty”—not in the sense of a vacuum or a void, but rather in the sense that the basis of experience is beyond our ability to perceive with our senses and or to capture in a nice, tidy concept. Maybe a better understanding of the deep sense of the word may be “inconceivable” or “unnameable.”

So when Buddhists talk about emptiness as the basis of our being, we don’t mean that who or what we are is nothing, a zero, a point of view that can give way to a kind of cynicism. The actual teachings on emptiness imply an infinitely open space that allows for anything to appear, change, disappear, and reappear. The basic meaning of emptiness, in other words, is openness, or potential. At the basic level of our being, we are “empty” of definable characteristics.
 

Today

Today I feel:
     sad
     frightened
     lonely
     angry
     empty
     unhappy
     tired
     frustrated
     overwhelmed
   
Then I ran a very hot tub, turned off the lights, and meditated. I realized that it could be (and will be) worse, but for now OK. I realized that nothing MAJOR or DANGEROUS or INCURABLE or UNREPAIRABLE is happening or changing. I realized that the SUM TOTAL of it, almost ten years now, is what gets to me, PIECE by PIECE and at times PEACE by PEACE.

So now I am dried off and dressed. Writing. Feeling better. Thank you for asking!