This year of anniversaries is not yet complete. This Sunday will mark the year anniversary of the day we laid Timothy to rest at White Eagle Natural Burial Ground. We may be weeks away from the changing of clocks, and months from the Winter Solstice, but the memories that foreshadow this dark day have already made my dreams restless and my days bleak. My mind’s playlist seems stuck on “In the Bleak Midwinter.”
Thank heavens the recent actual days of October 2019 have been bright: sun, blue skies, brisk chilling mornings and soft autumnal afternoons. I came home this afternoon prepared to feel kindly towards all wild creatures — the squirrels and jays that entertain my mother on the adult family home’s deck, the grosbeaks and robins feasting on my neighbor’s rowan berries. And then I saw the hoof-marks in the still-tidy bark mulch around the SunHouse’s bog garden, and the stripped twigs of the dogwood, and thought very bad thoughts about deer.
Tim used to love to see Rudy (as we called the big buck who periodically dozed in our back garden). I actually called out Tim’s name and cried, “Look, he’s back!” when Rudy showed up on the back patio early one August morning. But. The dogwood was only just recovering from last fall’s depredations, and I wasn’t keen to cede all that progress to a deer, however handsome.
I guess I am only just recovering from last year’s depredations of loss and sorrow. Perhaps I resent a reminder that I chased Rudy away last September when Tim was already very sick and confined to a hospital bed we feared he wouldn’t leave. He didn’t. And Rudy departed for the deep woods around St Placid Priory for the winter.
But soon, I hope, the playlist will come back to the good cheer of the yuletide season, and I’ll smile — just as Warren Zevon promised — when I think of Timothy playing one of my favorite carols on the Gibson L4. He didn’t like Christmas carols particularly, but he loved making me happy. And in remembering that, I will try to be happy in return.
The exciting day the Ornament Book (as I called it) arrived!
As Christmas draws near, I suppose I also owe it to Tim and our dreams for Art for Art’s Sake Press to make it a success. To that end, I’ll sit down and send an email out to our family of friends on October 13th, to remind of them about the Abecedarium of Ornaments, the ultimate Christmas-ornament fanatics book, and the funny array of Zazzle products made from those 330+ photographs. What funnier than a foot-stool with the picture of a very breakable Christmas bauble on it?
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