MAGICAL CHRISTMAS

Each year at Christmas, I take this magical journey through time. It’s a trip I have made possible, by being old, blessed with the wisdom of life. A trip I take because I lived through so many Christmas’s, loving, touching and knowing so many people.

So today, I vision a tree decorated only with tinsel and clear class bulbs and from each of them, shines a face that I knew so well when they were here on earth. They all look so happy now, but then that was how they were when I knew them at a different moment and place in time. A time when they were here sharing life with me and it’s how I choose to remember them now. Our lives have always been a picture puzzle of sorts but these were the pieces that completed me and made my world what it was, now helping my picture come to fruition.

There is no special order to the bulbs on my sacred memory tree, they’re all significant to me or they wouldn’t be there. Softly and silently they glow in the somewhat celestial darkness, hiding in the boughs. Illuminated by some unseen mystery power source I believe in, but don’t fully understand. The faces in the bulbs are somewhat blurry when seen in mass but when I approach them and touch them individually with my fingertips, they light up brightly and magically come to life. Then as if I have opened a long forgotten file in my computer and created a path from the tree to my memory, our lives become real again and I remember so many things long since forgotten about them. It’s a quiet meeting of sorts, no talking, just happy thoughts and recollections of a place and a time we shared so many years ago. All of these thoughts seem to flow softly back and forth on some telepathic connection that seems to defy all earthly logic.

There are no tears to cry tonight in this magical moment, just happy peaceful thoughts that seem almost melodious in nature. No pain or worries or grudges and sadness to bring back. It’s as if those things never existed in my past. I find my way moving quietly around the tree, intrepid yes, but softly touching each and every bulb, as if opening and closing tiny doors, one at a time. Our lives’ stories that once existed in harmony together seem for the moment to be bursting at the seams of my memory. There are no hellos or good byes to be said in this moment in time. In fact time is not of any essence to me and doesn’t seem to exist at all. Something tells me that it’s not only my Christmas’s past in these fleeting sacred moments that I am experiencing but a prevue of Christmas’s future for me someday. God willing I will take my place on that tree of life when my turn comes and somebody else will take my place on the outside looking in.

As cliché, as it seems Christmas is a “ways to the means” for so many of us. The means I talk about are peace, love and good will. We weren’t born with it. It’s a learned behavior brought on through our circle of life with those we love. Since the day we learned it, it’s always been there in our lives but it gets buried in the hustle and bustle of everyday life but then along comes Christmas to bring it all back.