Ghosts of Christmas Past

They’ve been swishing through my mind this week, my December memories.

I was one of those lucky kids who had idyllic Christmases. I won’t drag you through a soft-focus reminisicence; you’ll have to trust me on this one. The ghosts from those Christmases are all actual dead people. They haunt me with their love. When these grandparents, aunts, uncles, and older cousins walk arm in arm with my memories, they show up just to remind me of joys received and joys yet to pass on.

No, those ghosts aren’t the ones that slow me down.

The first Christmas after my divorce (Christmas was literally three days after the judge stamped the papers) I was living in alone in the apartment of my marriage. My ex and my dog had moved to an apartment down the hall in the same building. If I looked out the kitchen window, I could see the dog’s head and paws popped up over the windowsill, watching me from across the courtyard. I was sleeping on an inflatable mattress, but in an act of incredible hope I’d set up a tree in my entryway.

No. The ghosts that give me pause are the ones who have handed me perfect days, on a platter. Who have made me laugh until I was light-headed, who have made me feel so sparkling and precious I was sure I’d had them fooled once and for all.

I have a December memory of companionsip. Running through Central Park after a deep snow, pausing along the reservoir for a kiss so tender and hopeful I barely recognized the lips. There’s another memory of an afternoon movie, a stunned two hours of precious mundaneness. To that ghost, a ghost who pops up once or twice a year to wish me well in five words or less, I repeat my prayers: be happy. Find peace. Be healthy.

So much crap has happened this year. I speak more in a general, national way rather than about my life; I grieved my fair share and limped through eleven months of injury, but really, 2012 was a great year for me. Looking around, though, I acknowledge sadness and tragedy striking. Deaths, injuries, disasters, massacres. When my ingratitude threatens to rob me of persepective, I come back to this: I am healthy, I know where to find peace, and I am happy despite the flaws, both charming and repugnant, of this life and this world.

Merry Christmas to all my ghosts, because really, Christmas Past is Christmas Present is Christmas Future, and I wouldn’t be here without you.