On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

I've noted this before: in 2002, on Christmas Day, my father died of metastasized renal cell cancer. Some forty years earlier, a cousin of mine was born on Christmas Day.

The day has been a mixed blessing for my extended family across the decades, and I wait and wonder what twists the occasion will bring this time.

And so...here is us again. Those of us still here, anyway.

It's been a wild year, running the full range of emotion from joy to despair.

I wish you the best possible greetings of the Season, by whatever Name(s) you choose to honour it. I wish you peace, hope, wisdom, freedom, justice, and love. If you do not find them, may they find you and may it bring joy to you when they do.

I've noted this in years past: in 2002, on Christmas Day, my father died of metastasized renal cell cancer. Some forty years earlier, a cousin of mine was born on Christmas Day.

The day has been a mixed blessing for my extended family across the decades, and I wait and wonder what twists the occasion will bring this time.

And so...here is us again. Those of us still here, anyway.

It's been a wild year, running the full range of emotion from joy to despair.

I wish you the best possible greetings of the Season, by whatever Name(s) you choose to honour it. I wish you peace, hope, wisdom, freedom, justice, and love. If you do not find them, may they find you and may it bring joy to you when they do.

Naomi's funeral was held this morning.

I attended via Zoom, like some two dozen other friends and relatives. The Pandemic in Progress was certainly part of why. The travel time to and from the cemetery was also a factor. Ottawa is a very large city, so local public transit's current limitations meant a two-hour-in-each-direction travel time between where I currently live and the cemetery.

Anyway...the service was short, and I have a sense of her family and other friends being robbed of precious things by the Pandemic here too. siderea has discussed such things at some length in recent weeks and months: the loss of ritual, of community, stolen away by the need to protect one another. So have others, be they friends, family, or strangers to me, across the world. The rituals of shiva in particular, in this funeral's context, came to mind.

It's not the tradition I was raised with, but I don't much care about that. Unearned pain has been suffered here by too many already. And in order to move past my resentment, to master it and cast it out, I must first admit that it is here. In my heart.

And I miss my friend. One more among several, already gone.

Thank you, Naomi, for bringing what you could and what you did to my life.

Since that Christmas morning.

I still miss my Dad.