Remembering Loved ones, from Geranium Farm
“A SLIGHT SWEET STING
I think of my father often at this time of year — when I hear a certain carol, when I see a lot full of Christmas trees waiting to be chosen, when the snow falls from the sky. I hear the solemn cadence of Advent’s first collect, and hear it in my father’s voice: Now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility — and the old words seem to veil a warning from somewhere else. You do not have forever. Be awake to what there is now, before it is too late. I saw an advertisement in a catalogue last year for, of all things, Eccles Cake, a raisin-filled crescent of pastry that he used to make. I hadn’t thought of it in years. I looked up the recipe and made it. I took a taste and he was there. I will never forget how it tasted with tea; people who think the English make terrible food just don’t know what good is.
Do I wish I could go back there? Back to that time? No — I love this time, the one we’re in right now. And I would not wish to live the whole hard pageant of life again: as sweet as it is, life is also a lot of work; I am just not up to being that young and that foolish all over again.
But what a bittersweet pleasure it is, memory. It stings just a bit, to feel the ones who have gone before us, lingering and looking at us from around the edges of the present time. How wistful a happiness it is, and how sweet a loneliness. The light of afternoon begins to slant toward the earth as I sit here; the days are short now, and soon the shortest one of all will be upon us. And then the earth will turn, and the light will grow and grow: a new year will come, and a new spring, all of it new once again. They will not be living in it, as we do. But neither will they be entirely absent from it. ”