Winter Solstice 2009

Winter Solstice 2009 - a reading (on YouTube)

Tonight is the Winter Solstice. Today we gather all our candles and prepare to set the house alight.

Each year, the day begins with preparations. Like the night before a camping trip, we review our equipment, noting wear and patching holes. We wash the glass covers, add oil to the lamps, trim the wicks and clean the candle lanterns. Some only emerge from storage for this one night of the year. There is the one my mother gave us, the one from my grandmother, the ones from Karen, her friends and her sister. The one we light whenever necessary to guide wayward souls back home.

We arrange candles in clusters on counters and on tabletops, hanging lamps and lanterns from the ceiling, gathering flames anywhere away from inquisitive paws and whiskers. Candles float in a bowl in the kitchen. A few cat-proof globes adorn the dining room, others are scattered across the coffee table. The surviving Wolford from our wedding is perched atop the stove. We stake candle sconces along the front walk, a trail of flames to guide any visitors to our door.

This night from dusk to dawn no incandescents will glow within our home. No lights, no television, not even the memory of a fire we have captured on DVD. The stereo is the only electronic compromise as it cycles through a cappella music from a darker, more medieval age. There is a haunting, simple beauty in an anonymous quartet giving voice to carols and motets, chants and polyphony in soprano Middle English and alto Norman-French.

We brighten this longest night of the year in the manner of our ancestors, with candles, flame and oil. Our tradition began just under a score of years ago on a whim, an idea adopted from a more creative writer in a book no one remembers. These days, Karen has become more orthodox, more militant, unscrewing even the bulb in the refrigerator. Women are the keepers of our faith, the enforcers of our traditions.

We prepare the mead, anymore our lone batch of the year, mixing water with honey while it's still light enough to read the measures, adding the yeast before the night descends. For many years, we poured the ingredients in near darkness with only candles to light our way. Later, we will share a glass by the fire table, always sampling the fruits of the last year's tradition.

Even dinner is prepared and eaten before sunset. It was harder when we had to rush home from work to make the house ready. When we first started, we made sure we had something simple to prepare or reheat the moment we hit the door. Now, it's become a personal holiday, a festival, a feast, a celebration like any other. We roast a lamb shank with all the trimmings, a real holiday dinner, clearing off the remnants while it's still light enough to see.

At dusk we will wander out to the lake to watch the sunset. We will stand at the rail, comparing the sun's position to the other Celtic holidays throughout the year, reflecting on events that have filled the intervening spaces. We will head home at twilight, take up the matches and stick-lighter, and begin our ritual of candle lighting as soon as we return.

With all the preparations finished and the candles softly burning, we will finally have a chance to relax and reflect. A chance to breathe after another hectic year. Later, by candle-fire, we will exchange a single gift, always related to the holiday, a sconce, a lantern, something Celtic, something living.

Some time ago, we discovered that our neighbors of a more than a dozen years, who have since moved on, always thought we were Jewish. We are judged by our lack of Christmas lights, and the darkness of our home. We have no flashing icicles, no sparkling reindeer, no lighted plastic nativity, no inflatable Rudolph or Frosty or Santa. No tinny carols emanate from our yard. But every year, a wreath from Karen's sister adorns the wall beside our door. This year, another fragrant evergreen arrangement is ensconced on a table on the porch. For many years, a tree was visible in the library, lighted and shiny with antique tinsel, though it has since moved farther back in the house along with the all books. For half a dozen years, we donated our live tree to the community to be planted the park. Live, as in still living, not live as in freshly cut. And each year on the Winter Solstice, the blinds remain open as the house burns against the night.

Like every Solstice, eventually the darkness will return. One by one, the candles will be extinguished and we will be left with little but each other and the night. I do not fear the darkness; I embrace it in a way. I am more comfortable roaming thorough the house in winter than in summer, at midnight than at noon. The night is my advantage, the cloak of my disguise. I am used to seeing shapes and motion in place of clearer images. In darkness we are all once again created equal: none of us can see.

Some years, I sit down to write this message thinking I know exactly how it will end. Some years, something happens that changes that. This year it was a name, one resurfacing after more than a quarter century, one I hadn't heard since high school, contained in a brief message saying that a man my age had died, his family's holiday turned from joy to sudden grieving. All of our plans for light come to naught when a candle burns out prematurely.

Our kind thoughts to all of you no matter your holiday traditions, whether re-enacted in joy or private sorrow. However long the candles last, may they keep your Solstice warm and bright.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

Earl Morgan, a final note

Earl Morgan - a reading (on YouTube)

Today, I feel alone and untethered, like someone has cut an anchor line and suddenly I'm adrift.

Last Sunday morning, I received a phone call, one I'd been expecting for some time. Charles Earl Morgan, Jr., my uncle, my friend, had died the previous evening around 8 o'clock.

How do you explain a life, an individual, in a way that will make any sense to someone who never met him? I could say he was a WWII veteran, that he treated the wounded returning from the front, that the experience affected him deeply. I could say he was once a steward for Eastern Airlines. That he had an interest in biology and genetics, and thought, one day, science might neutralize humanity’s aggressive tendencies. That he suffered from depression. That he was fascinated by our family’s genealogy. That he always wanted to visit the south of Wales and was so excited when we toured the north. That he read science fiction, Asimov and Herbert. That he liked Impressionist art. That he had a collection of African woodcarvings. That he enjoyed the Winter Solstice. That he fed the cats he found outside. That he was the kindest, most understanding, most generous soul I’ve known.

None of those things mean much out of context. They are just facts and information, pieces and fragments. They are pale pigments that only paint a watercolor of the individual I knew. They don't encapsulate a life.

In the end, I cannot introduce you to him. I can only say what he meant to me. I’m not certain I will succeed but at least I have to try. I wish I could paint a beautiful picture or utter some memorable turn of phrase. But I can’t. This week, the words have failed me.

By the time we met, half his life was behind him. By the time I could remember him, he would have been about the age I am now. The last time I visited him, I was a teenager. The last time I saw him might have been at my grandfather’s funeral, but I cannot say for certain. The last time I heard his voice was a phone call over the summer. The last time I heard from him, a letter just a couple weeks ago.

We kept in touch through letters. We didn't talk a lot about the past. We talked about war and peace, life and nature, people and the world around them. I shared with him things no one else in my family knows, no one but my wife. Some family secrets, some observations. That was the type of friend he was, the type you could confide in without receiving any judgement, the type who always had a word of encouragement or support. The type you could trade letters with every few months and still feel completely connected with, as though you picked up the conversation just where you had dropped it off.

Recently, I sent him the things I'd written, essays and stories. He was one of the first people I’d shared them with, and seemed to enjoy reading them a great deal. For the past three years, I sent him a packet after each of the Celtic holidays. I’m told he saved every one. He was one of a smattering of people I knew was reading what I wrote. Part of the reason I started posting daily lines was to have something to share while I was restructuring the novel. I wanted to have something to give back as I knew he had been going through a difficult time. The last package went out a week before he died. His sister read him the final essay, for which I am more grateful than she knows.

I have a stack of almost fifty letters that I received in return, dating back just over twenty years. In his last letter he told me how much he appreciated me sending the essays and stories, how they had helped him through some very hard times. That’s the highest compliment I’ve ever been given, being told that something I wrote had helped someone else in some small way.

Like his final letter, now he, too, has gone missing. In a similar way, I keep searching for that letter in the last place I saw it but in my heart, I know it's gone. Lost, misplaced, perhaps never to resurface again, though I desperately hope it will. Just like him.

Last night, I had a dream, a nightmare. I was with Karen in a doctor's office. The doctor, an older woman who reminded me of a close friend's mother, was going over her blood counts, commenting that they were the highest she'd ever seen. My biggest fear these days is that I'll find myself back there, sitting in that chair, holding her hand while someone utters that fateful word again as I stare back into the maw, not of my own mortality, but rather of the potential loss of someone I care so much about. I woke up terrified of having to continue on alone.

There are only a few people that I care that deeply for, companions I am that connected to on the journey though this life. My wife, an aunt I write to every day, a series of familiars. A handful of others once upon a time, most already lost to circumstance and distance. There are people you meet in life that you can't explain why you're drawn to. For me, Earl Morgan was one.

When many animals are born, they imprint on the figure taking care of them, whatever species that individual might be. Humans are just as instinctive, only slightly more complex. Some people are lucky enough to be born into a family that provides all that they need, love and support, acceptance and understanding. Others have to look elsewhere. If we don't find what we need in the people at hand, we continue searching. Sometimes that search lasts all our lives. Once that bond has been established, no matter how late, it is inviolate and unbreakable. When it is severed, it creates an emptiness, a void where something existed a moment ago that has suddenly been removed. Spouses know this, as do parents who have lost a child. And children who have lost their parents.

Last Saturday, I lost more than a man I called an uncle, more than a friend, more than a mentor and a kindred spirit. I lost an individual I'd imprinted on, an individual I'd come to see as a constant, like air or food or water, noticed only when they disappear. A man who was warm and supportive and wise, a man with unique experiences that somehow resonated with my own, a man with a unique presence in the world, and a view of it I often shared.

How can emptiness feel so heavy, so wearying to carry? But still I stumble forward, more alone now, hunched under the weight of the man gone missing.

There are people who say they know what happens after death. Some go so far as to declare it with certainty. I know that no one can be certain, at least until they stand ready to cross the threshold from this life to whatever happens after. That is why our beliefs are titled faith.

What I do know is what happens on this side of the veil. We grieve, we remember, we are saddened by our loss. All grief feels selfish. We mourn what we are missing, what we no longer have, and sometimes forget to honor the life that was lived.

Earl, I am honored to have called you my friend. Wherever your ashes settle, whether in a National Cemetery or in the waters off your home, I hope you will ease the way for those of us left behind who wonder what awaits us. Whatever you discover on the other side, I hope it brings you peace. Godspeed and good journey, my friend. I hope one day we will meet again to resume our conversation.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III