It was not a good day. I'm having a bad grief day today. Over the weekend, a former member of my church - Jean - passed away. She had moved up north to be closer to her daughter; at first she lived with her and as her various chronic issues (she was in her early 90s) got worse, she moved to a nursing home. The women in the women's group here kept mailing cards to her so she'd still feel a part of things here.
Jean was the last living member of the scrabble group - there used to be game nights down at church, years ago, and her game was scrabble. It shook out that she, Dorothy, Marlene (the person who clued me in to the house where I now live coming up for sale) and I were the players many weeks. (Dorothy was cutthroat, and she'd yell at you if you dithered too long over a word).
I remembered that today, and that made me sad again. (And again, it's what my friend Wanda - herself a retired minister - says: when you mourn, it's not just the person, it's the realization that you will never spend time with them again, never have the fun you had with them again).
I had to go to Pruett's on the way home; I had to get stuff to make the usual meatballs for the AAUW Christmas party (Thursday night). The store was super crowded (I guess it was going-home time for a lot of people, the cash register glitched and dumped my whole order before I could pay, so the poor guy who looked like he'd been on his feet for a while had to pull everything out of the bags and ring it up again (I was nice about it, but yeah, it added several more minutes to my trip. It wasn't his fault, it was just a dumb computer glitch, and I get that so I was nice)
Anyway, after doing that, driving home, I punched the button to switch to the Christmas channel (what sadist at the Sirius classical channel you can get on a car radio thinks Prokofiev is a good drive-time composer? I swan there is someone who plays the most jangly 20th century music at the rush hours for the Eastern and Central time zones). The Christmas channel was playing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (the slightly-happied up Sinatra version, but still) and I just.....started crying.
I'm sure this is partly being tired, it being the end of the semester and all, and me just coming off an upper respiratory infection (any virus can cause a sort of transient depression; it's just more pronounced and recognized for COVID but I remember it after the various minor flus and colds I had in the past). But yeah......I guess again this year the long-expected Jesus isn't gonna be born again in my heart and change how I view the world. At least not in this point of Advent, which, okay fair, has just started.
1 comment:
Very sorry for your loss.
This year, an ex-girlfriend and still friend of mine died. Just before she died, I found it necessary to tell one of the pastors about this because her family dynamic is... complicated. I miss her largely because I didn't see her much during COVID; I will never see her again.
At my church, our pastors are doing a series of Advent sermons under the umbrella of How Does A Weary World Rejoice? I'm not saying that you will be ready for the Christ child in less than three weeks, but, for my part, I'm still open to the possibility.
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