December 2020: Christmas was fast approaching but it seemed like the whole world, at least the Western world, had sank in a deep paralysing sleep. The pandemic fear had spread like an invisible dust in all spheres of society and our joyful past Christmases seemed a distant memory. Would our Christmas ever come back?
Besides coping with the pandemic, I was also grieving the death of my husband, who had passed away just six months before.
He was the one who unfailingly every year since the day we met would prepare a Christmas show or a set of Christmas carols. One Christmas was over and he was already thinking and getting ideas about the next one. He really had a Christmas sparkle in his eyes and was able to pass it on to the children, the elderly, the sick.
But this year, none of that.
“Maybe he decided to leave us now, to avoid the suffering of a spoiled Christmas, who knows“- I was thinking, I guess in order to comfort myself a bit.
It was gloomy, yes, and somedays I would almost choke from the sadness of it all.
Stuck in the house and stuck with my pain.
But then one evening lights appeared on the windows next to the Christmas tree. I sat on the couch to admire them, turned on some Christmas music in the background and….I was gone into the eternal Christmas, untouched by pain and sorrow. I slipped in the comforting magic of Christmas and that became my favourite place, every evening. It brought warmth to my hurting heart and time to reflect and cherish memories from past Christmases, but also get some new ideas for the future.
To me Christmas had always meant helping the needy and bringing cheer to the sad, so this time it was all so different. Very little action this year.
Yet, during my moments of sitting still in front of those lights, besides initiating the process of healing myself, I felt as I could embrace with a prayer all suffering humanity. I found myself in the eternal, timeless, borderless Christmas.
Since 2020, like a child I eagerly wait for those lights to turn on.
Christmas 2020
Christmas 2022
The Love Log 