Thankful, grateful am I
Thanksgiving is always such a busy time . . . getting ready for the big holiday gatherings - always the first one of the season, right? - and the grocery store is packed with people and samples of yummy things, and all the traditional things. It is so easy to get caught up in the holiday season too soon, working in retail. I was putting up the Christmas displays in October, right after Halloween came down. Renaissance stretches to the week before the big feed (this year, anyway. Next year, we will include that big holiday weekend in our show with a three day stretch - something I'm really not looking all that forward to, in truth.) and between that and my regular work, there isn;t much time left for holiday prep. Lucky for me, DH's favorite holiday meal is a big juicy ham, and I find that sooooooo much easier to prepare than a turkey, so the bird(s) are in the freezer and DH is feasting daily on the left over ham.
My point here, though, was to refect on the sadness so many people feel with the coming holiday season, For so many, Thanksgiving (and even Halloween) represent the begining of that season of amplified aloneness that no amount of holiday decor, lights or food will reach. I had an aquaintance - a bright woman of only 51 - who picked this week before Thanksgiving to end her storied life. She was staying with neighbors, and was living, sort of camping out, in a new structure on their property. They had plans for many happy family gatherings to take place there in the new building, which they weren't yet moved into - might have been even planning to gather their large and loving family in that building for a first thanksgiving holiday since it was constructed. A couple days before that, though, this sad lonely woman swiped a rope, prepared a noose, and slung it over the still exposed roof rafters in this two story place. She hooked her noose over her head and took that final leap. Her action has colored that place for the neighbor's family, and it will be a while before they can exorcise the ghost of her actions in that structure, which was meant to shelter and contain the large and loving family into the future.
Many neighbors and aquaintances talked of how selfish suicide is . . . how the person who took the final leap didn't have to be the one who started his day out finding her cooling remains and who spent the rest of the day dealing with police and self recriminations about what he (they) might have done differently to save her. I will admit to agreeing with this genral premise a first, but then I started thinking about the dead woman - alone in life, without (or estranged from) family, facing her later years wondering if her looks would continue to provide for her, generally down hearted - and I can't help wondering if she picked that spot so she wouldn't be alone, so she'd always have loving family events around her, there in the home of the loving family.
I hope two things from all this: That the family, full of love and hope and laughter, will continue to use their new home as planned, and that the spirit of the sad woman will rest easy, there in the heart of one of the few loving familys she ever knew.
My point here, though, was to refect on the sadness so many people feel with the coming holiday season, For so many, Thanksgiving (and even Halloween) represent the begining of that season of amplified aloneness that no amount of holiday decor, lights or food will reach. I had an aquaintance - a bright woman of only 51 - who picked this week before Thanksgiving to end her storied life. She was staying with neighbors, and was living, sort of camping out, in a new structure on their property. They had plans for many happy family gatherings to take place there in the new building, which they weren't yet moved into - might have been even planning to gather their large and loving family in that building for a first thanksgiving holiday since it was constructed. A couple days before that, though, this sad lonely woman swiped a rope, prepared a noose, and slung it over the still exposed roof rafters in this two story place. She hooked her noose over her head and took that final leap. Her action has colored that place for the neighbor's family, and it will be a while before they can exorcise the ghost of her actions in that structure, which was meant to shelter and contain the large and loving family into the future.
Many neighbors and aquaintances talked of how selfish suicide is . . . how the person who took the final leap didn't have to be the one who started his day out finding her cooling remains and who spent the rest of the day dealing with police and self recriminations about what he (they) might have done differently to save her. I will admit to agreeing with this genral premise a first, but then I started thinking about the dead woman - alone in life, without (or estranged from) family, facing her later years wondering if her looks would continue to provide for her, generally down hearted - and I can't help wondering if she picked that spot so she wouldn't be alone, so she'd always have loving family events around her, there in the home of the loving family.
I hope two things from all this: That the family, full of love and hope and laughter, will continue to use their new home as planned, and that the spirit of the sad woman will rest easy, there in the heart of one of the few loving familys she ever knew.
posted by Cindy | 6:10 AM
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