Five years ago today, or on Christmas Eve, I began blogging on WordPress. Unfortunately, I took the blog down three years after launching it. But Christmases are the start of something new for me or a moment to reminisce. So here goes something about how I have been feeling about Christmas…
I arrived home when it was still fairly empty, cold, and ridden with naiveté, rain, and mud. This was before all the people from the city supposedly adulterated compounds with callousness and the insatiable need for fast internet when they should be off the grid for a few hours. Anyway, this Christmas felt empty to me, just like the last two years have been. One heavy circumstance -that our favourite grandmother had died- coupled with the fact that my siblings were nowhere close to home- meant that the boredom would be close to depressing, if not entirely dismal.
There weren’t copious fragments of the past since my family had boxed everything that reminded us of her. Still, the air smelt like it did three Christmases ago when granny finally decided she had had enough of this world. It was silent, and there was a certain discomfort, especially when I walked through the room she spent most of her time. The world had changed. The normalcy was no longer something I was well acquainted with. The golden haze that coated a patch in the horizon made her room seem warmer even though it was cold and motionless.
The usual chatter that went on around this time of the year had died down almost immediately after her demise. She was the glue that held us together, quite literally. The consequent years and Christmases after her passing were gloomy. There seemed to be an evil that kept stewing trouble between families that previously got along well, even though some pretense was inevitable here and there. Maybe death can destroy relationships, and it can also mend them. This year, the Christmas spirit seemed to have been repaired, except now, all my mother’s children, except me, were too far away.
That Christmas Eve, when I had to call the rest of the family to break the news of her death because mother was in too much shock and tears to speak, I felt the change brewing, and I felt myself abandon the childishness that still had its roots in me. I felt the storm concocting, hearts turning cold, relationships breaking, and grief boiling over. People became narcissistic, self-involved and, to some extent, stupid. I wished, for my life, that whatever broke the family firmament would remodel it, but that something was lost- at least during that period.
They say that we never stop grieving and eventually grow around it and know how to manage it better. It took a while, but a heart that lives in other people is never truly dead because now we can feel her among us again. Of course, everything is not completely restored, but it is as it should be. Or better than it was. Something changed in all of us. The grief made me look at things from a different angle, and I know I will never be the same again, but I also know that this is my best self yet.
Today, granny, while I sat on the verandah and stared at the new patches of green and dew that cover your resting place, I noticed that healing differs for everyone. Since your passing, we have indisputably outdone ourselves this Christmas. Even though you are not here, our time together greatly impacted all of us, and we celebrate your love regardless.
“There is a point at which even grief feels absurd. And at this point, laughter gushes up to retrieve sanity.” — Alice Walker
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