Winter passages
I'm going to be up front right now and admit to simply copying a whole chunk of Susie Bright's post on Boing Boing. Not only could I have written it myself given my own parents passed on the holidays and in same years as hers, but I also had a cherished voice recording from my mother. In fact it was losing her last voicemail to me on my cell phone after changing my calling plan (Verizon erased all my saved messages without warning) that was even a greater agony than her funeral, which I barely remember it being so rushed and I in such a fog. I'd saved her voice for nearly three years, every 28 days like clockwork, and when it disappeared it was like another death all over again. I did everything I could, talked to anyone who would listen about recovering that voicemail--from customer service reps to supervisors to lawyers. In the end there was no resurrection. And I'm still stunned by how powerful voice memories can be above and beyond photographs or writings. Anyway, Susie has similar recollections. Here is an excerpt from her post:
"My mother died four years ago, on a Christmas week. My father passed the next winter, when the light started changing and the warm days were gone for good.
A nurse called me one night from my mother's hospital bed and talked about the winter chill -- how when the temperatures suddenly dropped, even though everyone was well-heated in the nursing home, a score of people would pass away. The dying of the light at the end of the year was more than just a metaphor.
I feel a kindred spirit with others who've lost close friends and family during the holidays -- our memories of those relationships, warm or troubled, close or estranged, are overwhelming this time of year.
I was fortunate to find a book after my parents died, called Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, which is a collection of interviews with an incredibly diverse group of people who don't mince words about the transformation of loss.
Who knew that actor/rapper Ice-T got his nickname as a result of how cold he became as a child when he lost his mom and dad. I sobbed over Geraldine Ferraro's story, of all people. Each story is illuminating and comforting, especially during the holiday mania, when "false consciousness" seems to be in overdrive."