To thine own self be true

Every year at this time I break out my favorite Christmas CD–the diamond anniversary edition of Holiday Inn and White Christmas with songs by the great Irving Berlin. Warm memories of watching those movies annually with my parents on the old black and white through the ’50s and ’60s, remembering their enthusiasm for the vision of life and Christmas presented by those two classics. The big band sounds of another era–the ’40s and ’50s–and the best and happiest of what they remembered of their times–all come back with each song.

Listening to the CD, I remember my Dad singing along with Bing Crosby, the feeling I had while watching each song or dance number. Exquisite and exceedingly sweet or precious–all of it. It all comes back–those times, those memories, those deep bonds, the feelings of those times–the ’40s and ”50s, magically communicated 71 years later (Holiday Inn, 1942) and 59 years later (White Christmas, 1954), the memories of war camaraderie in the latter movie, and the sorts of extremes one would go to, to honour those who had once been part of one’s (war) life. So special, remarkable, and now-thoroughly, but charmingly passé.

I appreciate the places and memories I return to each year thanks to the following songs:
Happy Holiday
White Christmas
I’ll Capture Your Heart
You’re Easy to Dance With
Lazy
Abraham
Be Careful It’s My Heart
I Can’t Tell a Lie
Easter Parade
Song of Freedom
I’ve Got Plenty to Be Thankful For
Let’s Start the New Year Right
Snow
Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep
What Can You Do with a General?
The Old Man/Gee I Wish I Was Back in the Army

Once one gets past the tragic darkness in/of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, there are these two wonderful movie takes on Christmas, and if one ever needs more of a lift, one needs look no further than an old New Year’s tv favorite–the effervescent Singin’ in the Rain with the ever-sunny-full Gene Kelly.

Romance, comedy, history, and making-your-own-fun-and dreams-come-true. All such large and wonderful seasonal worlds that lift any sagging year-end spirits–movies and music that have delightfully transcended time and our oh-so-limited/limiting, diminishing modern era.

Del’s last Christmas was in 1997. He had been diagnosed with cancer in September that year and the cancer and treatments had started to obviously ‘waste’ him, something I became aware of when I was in Winnipeg that November. I drove the family the last week that December in -35 C across the prairies for them to be with him, for likely the last time as we all likely knew. He was very tired all the time and could not eat more than 2-3 mouthfuls, but he was in good spirits for the visit. In particular, he showed the kids my parents’ photo albums and various artifacts around the one-bedroom apartment. It seems like he could only do a couple of hours with us each day, he was that exhausted. However, we spent New Year’s Eve with them before we drove back home the following day.

Rose’s last Christmas was, nine years later, in 2006. (This time, my family flew to be with her.) She was able to walk, slowly, three flights of stairs at that point so we were able to take her out for a drive in the rented van to see the city lights–something she really appreciated, even commenting that her pain had magically subsided. We also took her to Assiniboine Park to the zoo part where my dad’s bench and plaque were and cleaned the snow off for pictures. Special treats included a Chinese food supper one night and Rose dancing with her teenage grandson. Unlike Del, I don’t know that she felt this was the last time she would see the family, and we know that she had hoped to make it to my son’s wedding in the summer of 2007 (which sadly was not to be).

Amazingly, Del and Rose died on the same day/date March 31. He passed quickly in Winnipeg General almost immediately after learning one morning that he would be going to a long-term care facility, not back home. She died quickly, within days, in the Riverview cancer facility after she was removed from home via ambulance. The decline was fast following her admission, after she realized and anxiously whispered to me “We forgot the cigarettes.” (They were both long-term heavy smokers.)

They died within one hour of each other on that same date. There is a lot that is mystery and I don’t believe my mother was aware of dates or time for the last week before she drifted into the coma that led to her admission. But the irony and significance of their proximate death dates and times did not escape me. My parents were that close.

Del and Rose were generally very happy people and inseparable in their retirement years. They were always quite active, walking miles to and from the park they loved each day. They did a lot of line and round dancing, and were sharp dressers–formal and classy-looking. They were vibrant, outgoing types who enjoyed travel, socializing, and considered themselves very fortunate for even the smallest of gifts. And they always looked out for those older and less fortunate than themselves, often befriending and visiting these people, even non-family members.

Gifts, company, family, kids, peace and joy aside, Christmas is also a time for reflection and perspective. Life and Christmas, in many ways, is simply presence and absence. And sometimes we get lucky–though one should never delay, especially when one has the intuition and opportunity (which, of course, was not there again for both these people the following Christmases).

Del and Rose truly enjoyed those last Christmases as did I and the family. Those were special, unforgettable Christmases for all concerned, even for those–my remarkable parents–no longer present today. How they smiled and laughed those final visits. How grateful all were to be together, despite the tricky schedules and geographical distance, even in those difficult, challenging, and obviously sadder times.

March 31 is always a memorable day, of course. But Christmas–those last Christmases–is how and when I fondlyand finally remember Rose and Del, when they were last with the family they loved, at home, in their world.

at Gatwick Airport. A major collision is bound to happen. Just a matter of time.

In the meantime, drones continue to be a hot Xmas item in the absence of few restrictions. “Hey, buy a drone, bring down a plane. Cool, man!”

No common sense or limits where technology is concerned. “If it can be done, do it, baby!” is the motto of most technology.

“He who loses his life shall find it.”–quoted by Joseph Campbell

Two of the most inspiring Christmas movies ever are the Alistair Sim version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and Frank Capra’s movie It’s a Wonderful Life. They have inspired many generations of viewers with their simple, yet profound core messages about life.

Both show us the huge difference between (transitory, ephemeral, living) presence and (deathly, ghostly, forever) absence–or the extreme loss of presence. In the Dickens’ story, Scrooge comes to learn the hard way that absence can be a terrible point-of-no-return and that he has meanly absented himself from his family, his sister, her son, his fiance, his employee Bob Cratchit, and his business partner Marley. In his heartless, monolithic  obsession with accumulating meaningless wealth, he has also alienated himself from whatever good qualities he once possessed or valued in the past.

It is only through realizing unchangeable, irrevocable absences like those of his dead sister, fiance, and Marley and by being given a glimpse of a future without Tiny Tim and himself, that he is able to reconnect with finer values of kindness, love, and generosity. These values, in turn, help him to reconnect positively with both society and his once-better self. In the world of A Christmas Carol, the only other alternative is grim, stark hopelessness, suffering, and death, as amply revealed by the three ghosts who visit Scrooge.

Scrooge’s final appreciation of presence and being alive become epiphany and reason enough for him to celebrate and re/connect with the social world. Though this change comes late in his life, Scrooge ‘magically’ finds that he can will any possibility into being with humor and a better attitude–key positive manifestations of both presence and consciousness.

Likewise, George Bailey, the main character in It’s a Wonderful Life, suddenly finds himself ‘lost’ and ‘gone missing’ in a way reminiscent of Scrooge, but, in contrast, he is truly a desperate man driven by crisis to the brink of suicide. The beginning of his salvation occurs at the bridge when he saves his drowning guardian angel Clarence. That event alone reveals George’s essential nature of putting others before himself, something he had previously done all his life.

Like Scrooge, he is shown life without his presence and an alternate nightmarish version of his own community–a negative view caused by his absence and his granted wish to never have been born. After a final repentance, George is given back his less-than-perfect life, grateful for the chance to recover both presence and life. Like Scrooge, his limited/limiting, blinkered attitude changes and he embraces life, with all its problems and shortcomings. That said, both protagonists find a richness through their experience and a renewed appreciation of presence and others. And as both characters discover, nearly anything becomes possible when one fully accepts and embraces life and presence.

Today we still hear that Christmas can be a stressful, isolating time of year for many individuals in our society. For those who may find themselves similarly ‘lost’ or ‘gone missing’, these two classics offer helpful perspectives on some of the ‘basics’ for finding or recovering purposeful meaning in one’s own life.

(Especially in Dry Winter Climes)

A collapsible back-scratcher.

Bread warming up in a toaster. As well: even the lingering, leftover smell of heated toast crumbs.

Man’s inhumanity to man, women, children, animals, and Nature makes countless millions mourn.

(The still-tragic side of Christmas, 2018)

“Life is a shower of ever-falling atoms of experience, not a narrative line. It is ‘luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.'”
–Elizabeth Drew and “Virginia Woolf”

Indeed, these fragments of experience constitute a life, but as Woolf points out, life is essentially whatever consciousness we experience between cradle and grave. If an individual is seeking the essence or quiddity of life, he or she need look no further than what they are aware of as it continuously unfolds and is apprehended in experience, especially by mind. Mental experience and subsequent processing is the key to meaning, purpose, and significance in realizing, understanding, or appreciating in individual life.