Ritual of Remembrance
by Elouise
~ ~ ~ King’s College Choir, Cambridge, U.K.
It’s Christmas Eve, 1998. I’m sitting in a chair in our living room, facing our stereo speakers. Tears stream down my face. I’m listening to the annual live broadcast from King’s College in Cambridge, England. A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
My young adult son walks into the living room, surprised to see me weeping freely. He asks if I’m OK. I manage to blurt out my fear that I may never see my mother again.
Several weeks earlier I received news that Mother suffered a stroke the weekend following Thanksgiving. Not the kind that’s easily reversed. Not massive, yet it took her down. She’s still in the hospital, not making much progress. On top of that, she has developed pneumonia.
I weep for the beauty of the music and the knowledge that Mother may not make it. I weep for remorse and regrets about not connecting with her earlier in my life. I weep for myself and the huge gaping hole in me that’s shaped like a mother but doesn’t yet contain that or its equivalent.
Every Christmas Eve I do whatever I can to listen to the King’s College choir. A box of tissues is close at hand. That’s my plan for this Christmas Eve. A beautiful, moving ritual of remembrance, gratitude and grief.
Do you have rituals of remembrance for this season of the year?
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 15 December 2014
Stock Photo from Google
Telling the Truth 
Yes, on Christmas Eve our family has always had a ritual of Remembrance and I have carried it with me into and throughout my adult life. For Mother it was remembering when at the age of two (2) she lost her mother to cancer. She was the youngest child with all married brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews her age…. Good? Bad?
Her father, a Philadelphia police sergeant, had no time for Naomi. He was a bit of a stubborn man. Though Grandma and Grand pop Floyd very much wanted to raise Naomi “No way” would “Daddy” let her go. No, instead, Mom went from home to home of whatever brother or sister could one, afford to keep her (it was during the great depression) and two, was on speaking terms with “Daddy”: Ray (Fran and two children), Fats (Cass and one child), Ruth (Al and three children), or Mae (Tom and the “tribe). Mom loved them all but she never really never knew where she would be living for the next week, a month, a few months or more. (She never got to live with her grandparents whom she loved and adored.) In her Junior High and High School years she boarded with the M/M Livingood and M/M Webb. On a rare occasion “Daddy” would send her trolley money to come and visit.
Actually, it was not until I was in my young adult years that I realized Mom had 4, 5, 6, or more “fathers and mothers”. It was only as those from her family past away that I realized some of the psychological impact her childhood was having on her adult life. Tough on Lloyd III, and me.
So each Christmas was the retelling in word and actions of part of her story – newspaper for shoes, carrying pails of coal home that were found by the train tracks, and baked bean sandwiches day in and day out.
Yes, Christmas Eve we burned a new candle ’till its light was gone.
Visits to all the cemeteries to lay wreaths and a bayberry candle continues to burn for those who have gone on before us. The tradition continues on too to recognize the loss of my brother’s second wife who died of cancer shortly after Christmas, my grandparents, dear friends of Mom’s who became dear friends of the family, and in 2012 my Dad. My brother Lloyd and I wait as we see our mother slowly decline after a stroke to light the last candle. We have no desire to carry the tradition on. We have the Lord Jesus to honor and celebrate.
Sixty-four years of Christmases with weeping and sadness…. It will stop! I will not forget everyone, but they will not be the center of focus of my Christmases to come. I’ll have some good classical or sacred classical music playing and will be putting on the finishing touches of a Christmas for “the child of my empty arms” – an orphan of any or several nationalities.
Thank you Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who makes and will make all things right and new. I’m in the middle of the story now but I know that in the end – King Jesus wins.
LikeLike
Thank you, Lorraine. I pray you will discover great joy this Christmas in your own traditions, and that your Mom finds the peace and love she’s looking for and deserves.
Elouise
LikeLike
I, too, keep the lessons and carols from King’s College as a central part of my Christmas celebration. Married to a non-Christian, I haven’t attended a Christmas Eve service in decades, but the lessons and carols suffice. For many years, I wondered what it would be like to attend the lessons and carols service in person. I had the opportunity to attend evensong services one summer afternoon in Cambridge & found to my astonishment that the chapel was so reverberant that you could barely understand a word! The broadcast is clear as a bell. Once in Royal David’s City…
LikeLike
Thanks, Meg. I’m sad to hear the chapel itself isn’t necessarily the best venue. Who would have thought…
Elouise
LikeLike
We started a simple one a few years back. At dinner, we light a candle for our family members who have passed.
LikeLike
What a wonderful ritual! I love it. Thanks, April.
LikeLike