home for Christmas

  Six years gone. It was exactly six years ago today that my sister went to her final rest. I still wait for her phone call, look for a card from her on my birthday and speak of her. Time, it has been said is a fleeting thing. My emotions however, are not. My sister was there when I was born, a constant, and a comfort in times of need or sorrow. Although we were separated by life's choices most of our adult lives, the bond remained unbroken. A blood bond, a bond of the heart. We did enjoy each others' company the final few years of her life and for that time I am grateful. It was a time in both of our lives when the drama, the competition between siblings had run its' course. There was no judgement, no what-ifs or if you had. We just spoke as brother to sister. 

  Today all that remains of my "core" family is myself and my brother Dan. Brother Dan for reasons known only to him has chosen to remain detached and silent. I have tried to call, sent a few cards and even a few letters, all to no avail. I can only trust that all is well in his world. At this time of the year, the holiday season, all those emotions rise to the surface buoyed by the promise of a new year, a new start. At the same time we all return to our youth, our childhood in our dreams. My childhood is filled with happy memories. I gather those memories around me like a warm blanket. Memories of my father, gone these thirty four years now. Brother Harold, ten years ago and Mom three years already. I could not have envisioned Christmas 2024 being such. The passage of time extracting a toll.

  I have witnessed a generations end, and soon I will witness the beginning of another, with the birth of my first great grandchild. My parents generation quickly dwindling in number and indeed my own facing the inevitable, concerning only because of that awareness. We are not aware of that in our youth, we do not feel the passage of time and see that toll being paid. Even in adulthood we will deny that, pass it off as something that will happen; later. And now later becomes sooner, and we wish for time to just slow down. It all just seems to rush at us, passing us by as we remember all those that are not still on this journey we call life. 

  Last year I was given a brick taken from the fireplace my father had built in my childhood home. That home was torn sown, replaced and all the memories inside set free. I was grateful for that brick and constructed a scale model of that fireplace on top of it. I had a few photographs to go by but mostly I relied upon my memory. The resulting model is what I remember it to be. I light a candle inside it occasionally and reminisce. Like an ancient offering to the gods the flame flickers and I remember. It is a connection to the past, my past. Only brother Dan remains to verify that based on personal experience. No one else in my family today ever saw that home or fireplace. All of that is just a story to them. And that is what we will become one day, a story. The hope is that the story will be remembered.