Spectacles and Retrospectives

It has long been joked and understood that I am the glorious, difficult to describe, anomaly that happens when hippies have children and raise them on hearty diet of Jesus Christ, Joan Baez and Dr. Seuss. I was sung to sleep with James Taylor tunes and taught to recite the Apostles Creed. My musical intake consisted of John Rutter on Sunday mornings and Jimi Hendrix on the drive home. Grandpa schooled us in Pete Seeger's expansive catalogue. Mom steeped us in words and melody of John Denver tunes.  She was a dedicated and devoted fan. Denver's words, perspective and bond to nature served as her poetic  anchors. She valued his insight and articulation of the human spirit tremendously and looked to his eloquence for my name. The second stanza to "Zachary and Jennifer" poetically dreams of the naming of children :  And we want to call her Jennifer And she'll dance in fields of flowers And she'll sing in summer showers Lending music to the time Oh we want to l...

Before the clock rolled over to December 26th, she was reliant on a ventilator. Less than two weeks later, she was gone.  It took me years to not feel overrun by the hostility of being cheated by hope. It still burns. I still clamor and stumble in darkness to see past the  injustice of someone who had fought so hard to live through chronic health conditions being taken down by the unstoppable swift end to pancreatic cancer.  Christmas in my heart has been branded with the insignia of death. The season is painful. The sights, the sounds and the merriment  all remind me of a time when I was watching the life leave someone. The time when I was a helpless bystander in a confusing and bewildering drama.  The Christmas season that year was the end of so many things.  It was the end of my mother's life. It was the end to her pain and struggling. It was the end to Christmas past and my childhood traditions. It was the end of a chaotic normal. The f...