Monthly Archives: December 2019

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December 24, 2019

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Elegy, Gratitude, Wonder

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Fresh Starts

On Christmas Eve Day, 1985, I gathered box after box of paper and stacked them along a bedroom wall in our apartment on Prospect Avenue. The papers included old tax receipts, recipes that were unlikely to be made, course materials for high school classes I would not teach again, and more. That first year of what was to become my annual cleanse, I tossed the printed stuff gathered for the master’s degree I earned five years earlier. I also tossed notes for a book I had planned to write on substance abuse recovery along with valentines from an old beau.

All of this was in preparation for a bonfire some friends and I planned for New Year’s Eve Day. We decided to take as little into the new year from the past as we could manage. There were seven of us that late December morning, men and women, black and brown and white. One of the guys arranged for a Native American leader to guide us in a sweat lodge, using the stones that lined the bonfire to heat the lodge built with a frame of bent branches near the edge of some woods in Washington County. Blankets covered the frame to form the lodge itself.

In the hours that we stoked the flames with old papers, we shivered despite our coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. Some hugged each other. I stood silently, alone in the group wishing Paul were not occupied with the perennial Nutcracker mayhem that had consumed us all month. I hugged myself, moving from side to side so that bloodflow to my feet would stave off numbness. All of us circled the fire after a time, avoiding the shifting smoke streams that stung our eyes. Finally, once the bonfire had collapsed upon itself, a shovel and a pitchfork were enlisted to drag the hot stones and some embers into the lodge.

We stripped in the open before each of us quickly and quietly ducked into the dark space.

Several times during the hours we were in the lodge, we’d be told to quickly dash out into the cold. From the black of the lodge into the gray light of winter, we were at once somber and giddy, contemplative and outrageously alive. We seemed impervious to the frigid winds. Quietly standing side by side, we were somehow more one than when we arrived hours earlier.

The last sweat was concluded with a jump into the snow. Our guide was first. He was the last one out of the lodge, first chanting, then yelling louder and louder until he passed us all, running into the field were the snow was deep and undisturbed. I recall noticing then our nakedness in a new way – more relieved by it than self-conscious.

In the 34 years since that first time, I have missed my annual paper purge only once, but I had left the sweat lodge long in the past. The one year I didn’t toss paper, I had just started the ritual review and looked forward to spending a few hours at it each day for the last week of the year.

Then Paul died on the morning of December 24, 2014.

The preceding decades saw us move from away from most holiday traditions with which we were raised. Paul, an agnostic, disliked Christmas decorations that felt to him incongruent with his understanding of spirituality. Raised Catholic, I was increasingly aware of my own Jewish heritage, the cost to my mother of that conversion and assimilation by her family, and my disbelief in a deity. Over the years we made our own traditions, including yearly discussions about generosity, distribution of money to charitable causes, lighting the Menorah, noting the successes of the year that was ending, and – of course – the sorting and destruction of paper.

Once again, for the past few days of 2019, I have been working on my ritual sorting of paper. It has gone quite well. I have even taken several deep breaths and gone to the boxes and baskets, files and drawers that have been left untouched since Paul died. Since 2014, I have avoided these archives during the paper purge. For many reasons the sorting has taken longer this year – much longer.

Drawing of Effy for my birthday

The box of letters from Paul’s aged father that related to his son — the son who had been ejected from the family — his daily activities of greeting neighbors or constructing a trellis. The photos of his childhood beagle, Bella. Drawings. Hundreds of drawings. Letters of encouragement written by fellow dancers when he could no longer walk because of advanced MS. Scores of letters and notes from me. A gift card to a restaurant that he could not visit because of their stairs. Social security card. Medicaid reviews. His birth certificate. The manilla envelope containing his last hospital discharge, releasing him to my care. There was no hint in that review – the report produced just a week before his death – that he wasn’t going to live long.

Little stings in this annual ritual. Much of what I examine is just stuff. Some of it is getting tossed. Small art supplies will be given to a man who I know will like them. Of course the art work is being boxed and cared for. Under debate are his high school ID photos, his year book, notes from his semester in Spain when he feigned heterosexuality one last time.

I am glad I waited five years. I stand here silently, alone, wishing Paul were here. I hug myself, moving from side to side so that blood flow will stave off any sense of numbness. I notice now the nakedness of my grief in a new way – more relieved by it than self-conscious. Where there was initially profound emptiness, there is mostly complexity, gratitude, and awe.