WRITING THE CHRISTMAS LETTER: 2019

“If you use the bad parts to get to the good parts you’ve done something good.” Elton John In the last week before Christmas I agonized over the production of a Christmas letter, the kind you add a personal sentence to, and send out to everybody who writes to you, and everybody you expect to get something from, even some people you don’t get anything from and haven’t for years. Back in November, when I carefully contemplated what to write in such a letter, I had decided not to write at all. That plan held up very well until a week before Christmas when people began writing to me. David and I used to co-produce a Christmas letter back in the days when it could be signed with both our names. I’d make a start some time in November, asking David what he thought we ought to write. He’d mention a few things. I would keep at it, adding and deleting, until I deemed it ready for proof-reading. David would correct the typing and add a thought or two. “That’s fine,” he’d say. “It’s ready to send.” Without David in the physical world, I believed the writing of my 2019 Christmas letter would be a solitary pursuit. But then, things got complicated. It seemed I was dealing with two versions of myself. There was the me who had decided to write a Christmas letter, and a reluctant woman sitting at my computer, refusing to press the keys. “How hard can it be to write a Christmas letter?” I said to the reluctant woman. “All you have to do is tell people what you did this year. Start at the beginning. Here. I’ll show you.” Pushing her aside, I wrote a paragraph. “David died on January 10,” I wrote. “His last few days were difficult because we often couldn’t understand what he wanted to say. But he was determined to be understood. He insisted that I immediately put money for 2019 into his tax free savings account.” He didn’t say, “You will have the money after I die if you put it in while I’m still alive.” But we both knew what he meant. He meant: “Go do it right now.” I showed my paragraph to the reluctant woman. She was outraged. “You can’t start a Christmas letter that way,” she scolded. So I pushed Delete and started over. “We were all saddened by David’s death at the beginning of the year,” I wrote. The reluctant woman stayed my hand. “That’s not entirely true,” she said. The truth is, you weren’t that sad because you thought it was time. You’re a lot sadder now than you were then. One of your favourite memories happened right after he died. Remember how you sat with him, marvelling at how his twisted tortured body had suddenly relaxed, how you lingered with him, holding his hand in absolute peace. That doesn’t sound very sad to me.” “Should I take it out then?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said. “Should I add the part about being peaceful at the end?” The reluctant woman was—well—reluctant. “Maybe you should skip David altogether and do what other people do. Try describing your grandchildren.” I pressed Delete and started over. “All five grandchildren make a project of delighting their Granny. Carys is a gymnast with a fondness for unicorns and Lewis can charm you while climbing on top of a table at lightning speed. Ben has learned to read in two languages, Evan builds something with Lego every morning before he goes to school, and Clara spent most of last week pretending to be a baby lion.” After that, I couldn’t think of another thing to say. So I wandered around the house, pouring cups of coffee, setting them down on various tables and losing track of them before I’d finished. “Come back here and finish this letter,” nagged the woman who had previously been sitting at my computer. “And don’t push the Delete key. This stuff about your grandchildren has potential. It just needs a little fluffing up. Take a break from that topic and tell them about your travels.” Feeling a little bit encouraged I wrote that I’d made four trips to Guelph, one to spirit River, one to Jasper and one to Vancouver. I spiced it up with some stories of cruising in French Polynesia. I was conscientious about naming people who had been there for me during my travels. Then I got up, searched the house, and used the microwave to warm the coffee from some of the abandoned cups. “Be happy,” I said to myself. When I sat down again I deliberately wrote about happy things. I wrote that I was happy to be living in my apartment, happy to be walking in my neighbourhood, to be playing bridge and going to exercise classes and writing for fun with new friends at the Joy of Writing Club. I wrote that I had joined two choirs. I mentioned that I still facilitated hope groups, having not quite completely retired from my work in hope studies. All of this was true, and my confidence grew—until it didn’t. In its place there came a tsunami of grief that sent me running to my bed where I howled in abject misery. “What now?” I cried out to the reluctant woman. “Do I have to quit, after all the work I’ve done?” “I don’t know,” she said. “But don’t push the delete button.” Instead of continuing the letter, I went back to the computer and read an on-line article in Psychology Today. “You can’t outrun grief,” the author boldly declared. The reluctant woman considered this. “You are the living proof of that,” she said to me. “Perhaps you should grieve a while. Maybe you’ll be able to finish the letter tomorrow.” In our forty-five years of marriage David and I read hundreds of Christmas letters. Some were funny. One relative always drew her year in cartoons. Another used the language of a medieval castle. Some were informative—births, marriages and such. Others were boring. Enough said about that. But there was one letter that chilled us so thoroughly to the bone that we had to turn to each other for comfort. It was a devastating life summary, sent by Cousin Lila. It was cloaked in sadness and despair. Her husband and all his siblings had Alzheimer disease. She wrote details about each of them. She ended the litany by wishing all of us a Merry Christmas. “Lila is depressed,” I said to David. He said, “Everything in this letter is probably true, but I wouldn’t send it at Christmas time.” With this in mind, I turned back to the reluctant woman. “I’m not Cousin Lila,” I said, “and I’m not Susie Sunshine either. I want to write a Christmas letter. Who am I?” anyway?” “You’re a grumpy, weepy, unpredictable griever living a basically happy life,” she said. And so it was that I found myself back at the computer the following morning, cleaning up my writing and developing an opening paragraph something I hoped would tell a truth that could reasonably be followed by Merry Christmas wishes. “It will be a different sort of Christmas this year. No doubt each of us will miss David in our own way, though it has been some time since we had a Christmas that wasn’t influenced by the need to accommodate illness. I would say that grief in my case is less a gradual process of healing over time and more a situation where kamikaze attacks occur when you are doing well in the big picture. I’ve been concentrating on learning new things, having fun and paying it forward as a tribute to the small army of people who have been lighting up my life over the past few years.” The reluctant woman and I checked it over with a critical eye. It was a longish letter, a little too perky, a little too busy. But the time had come to add personal greetings and send it anyway. Out went the copies, one by one. After so much dilly-dallying, I had expected to be pleased. Instead, I found myself turning apologetically to the memory of David. “I’m sorry that letter seems so cheerful,” I said to him. “I failed to mention how broken-hearted I am. They should be told that every fiber of my being still wishes you were here. I wanted to tell them how utterly bereft I get when I think that all my future Christmas letters will be written without you. How could I have edited it all out?” But the memory of David was remarkably unperturbed. “We couldn’t have sent such a letter,” was his response. “It’s not in our nature. If we couldn’t have said something good, we wouldn’t have said anything at all. But I do think you could have mentioned the tax-free savings money we put in my name back in January. You’ve had that money in savings for a whole year now. That’s $5,500 plus interest you won’t have to pay taxes on. It is an accomplishment worth celebrating.” “Too late for this Christmas letter,” I said. “That story will have to be written elsewhere.”

A TV INTERVIEW WITH THE FAMILY DOG

Pirate: You’re looking sad today. Anything the matter? Me: Well, nothing too serious. But my TV doesn’t talk. Pirate: It must have broken overnight. Why, just yesterday I heard it spewing out Jeopardy questions and playing Season 8 of M.A.S.H. Me: Oh, it can still do that. What I mean is, it doesn’t really talk to me the way I want it to. It doesn’t say the things I want to hear. Pirate: I have heard that is often the case with humans. But I didn’t know TV’s did it too. What did you want it to say? Me: I want it to tell me what channel I am on. I want it to speak out loud so I will know even though I can’t read the channel indicator. Pirate: I thought it did. Me: Well, it did when I bought it. I searched the Web until I found the only one that would speak the channel number. Then I put out the big bugs and bought it. They call it a SMART TV. Pirate: And now it stopped? It isn’t smart anymore? Me: Well, not exactly. It still could tell me the channel if I unplugged it from the digital box. But now that it is plugged into the digital box, it has to stay on channel 4 so the digital box will work. Pirate: Then why not just unplug it from the digital box? Me: Because then we wouldn’t be able to watch it. You have to have a digital box in order to get the channels! Pirate: Then why don’t you get a talking digital box? Aren’t there digital boxes that talk? Me: Not as far as I know. Pirate: Surely they will invent one soon. Me: Maybe. But that still won’t be enough. Pirate: What more do you want? Me: I want a TV that reads the screen with the channel line-up. I want a TV that reads the screen so that I can operate the PVR. I want a TV that reads the screen so that I can use the DVD player, maybe even the old VCR. I want a TV that treats me as if I were a sighted person. Pirate: Isn’t that what your TV does now? Me: You dogs are so insensitive! I thought I could talk to you! I thought you’d listen. Why do you have to twist everything I say? Pirate: (muttering as he slinks under the bed) Women! It’s enough to make me grateful that I’m neutered.

CATANALYSIS

Therapist: Good morning Kitty. What shall we talk about today? Kitty: I had another conversation with that dog named Pirate. Therapist: Tell me more. Kitty: So Pirate licks the bowl after I’ve eaten my dinner and then he says, “Hey Kitty! I hear you and your people are moving out of our house.” “Yep,” I say. “I hear they’ve decided to leave this little suite for a place with three spacious bedrooms.” “Yep.” “With a double garage so they won’t have to scrape and sweep their cars before work next winter,” “Yep.” “And I hear that instead of that tiny little bathroom with no counter, there will be two-and-a-half baths, with a new high efficiency hot water heater and furnace.” “Yep.” “And they say it has a spacious family kitchen with almost-new appliances and a friendly big living room.” “Yep.” “And a whole basement for your litter box, and your very own yard to play in.” “Yep.” “And now it will be just the three of you in Mark and Tracey’s bed without having to make room for me.” “Yep.” “And you won’t have me around to lick your bowl after every meal.” “Yep.” Then he gets that hang-dog look and he says, “Oh Kitty. I’m so sorry. You must be absolutely devastated.” Therapist: And how do you feel when Pirate says such a thing to you? Kitty: Tell me! What sense can there be in a world where the innermost feline experience can be distilled down in a few short woofs?

HOPING, COPING AND MOPING WITH CHANGE

A change is coming up for me. It will happen on December 31. It’s not a change I wanted, but it’s coming anyway. Managing that change will take some focus, some thought, some flexibility. Is that a good way to start thinking it through? No, let me try again. A change has already begun for me. It’s the change that happens when you begin to plan for a change on a specified date, take for example, December 31. Managing my life during the change is taking some focus, some thought, some flexibility. So here I am, doing the three things I tend to do in the face of looming change: hoping, coping and moping. Hoping, coping and moping. Even as I write these three words I suspect I have put them in the wrong order. Of course it’s only natural for somebody who calls herself THE HOPE LADY to put hoping first. And, to be fair, I am hoping, quite a bit actually. Hope, as I often say in keynote speeches, is a positive and healthy experience. It permits us to consider the future and simultaneously be okay in the present. I am luckier than the average person. I have, at the front of my consciousness, at the tips of my fingers, engrained in my repertoire of habitual thoughts, a fascinating and varied collection of hope-fostering tools and strategies. I have a history that constantly reminds me of something my good friend Christy Simpson once said to me: “When you do hope work, it works on you.” So why am I thinking I have the three words in the wrong order? Well, it’s a matter of time allocation, I guess. The truth is, I seem to be spending a lot of my time coping. Coping, as I have often said in keynote speeches, is the process of taking each day as it comes and doing the things that need to be done in response to the things that are happening. It requires energy and creativity. It often involves deliberate activity. It is focused firmly in the present. Its rewards are twofold. On one hand, coping gets you through each day so you can start the next. On the other, it earns you a lot of praise. Everybody loves a good coper. You hear: “I am just amazed by how well you cope!” With feedback like that, it’s small wonder we tend to spend so much time coping. So I’m giving a lot of energy to coping, which is why I think it ought to go first. But then, yesterday, I started to wonder, if I really didn’t want this change, why shouldn’t moping get the chance to go first? Moping, as I have often said in keynotes speeches, is the expression of a natural constellation of emotions, sadness, frustration, annoyance. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Yet it’s the process most feared by the world’s best copers. They fear that if they let it show, nobody will like them. They fear that if they let it take hold, they won’t be able to make it stop. To be quite honest, I have been doing quite a bit of moping—mostly in secret. Moping in secret, I have often said in keynote speeches, is a waste of good moping. Moping is a process with a purpose. It was invented to give the best copers a bit of relief from the unceasing pressure of having to cope all the time. Moping, in its best form, is a message to others that you need to be comforted, or helped, or simply allowed time and space to get your act together. Moping, I have often said, knowing that copers won’t mope forever, is something you ought to do more of. Yesterday I decided to take a little of my own advice. I vowed to start moping more, to mope better. “I’m tired of all this coping,” I told my friends. “I am tired of being responsible, of being professional. I am tired of being a hero. I am going to be a victim.” My friends were very quiet. I could see they were thinking. Finally one of them said with great compassion, “I expect this change will be very difficult for you.” Now there’s nothing that makes victimhood more difficult than heartfelt expressions of great compassion. Nonetheless, I was determined to mope, and I would not be moved. “No it won’t be difficult for me to be a victim,” I shot back in my best victim fashion. “I’ve had more than enough of looking after others. I’m going to be hurt and helpless. People can look after me for a change.” My friends were quiet again. They were thinking again. They’re a bit like me. They don’t like to lose an argument. One of them said, “You’ll have to develop some new skills. Take the diva stamp, for example. (The diva stamp is something I do with my foot when I’m planning to go ahead with something and I won’t be dissuaded. Just doing it gives me power, resolve, hope.) You’ll have to find something to replace the diva stamp,” they said. “You always smile right after the diva stamp. Good victims don’t smile.” I was quiet. I was thinking. This was exactly the time when I needed to use the diva stamp, to show them I meant business. But what if they were right? What if the diva stamp was always a precursor to smiling? Tears would be the thing I needed, tears pouring down my face. I concentrated on tear production. I focused on it. I waited for the tears to fall, fall in public, fall the way they fell in the days after I first got the news of the change. Unfortunately, I’ve never been any good at producing tears on request. A sad song will bring them down in 1.5 seconds, but you are not always in reaching distance of a good stereo. I was not in reaching distance of a stereo with the right sad song playing on it. Still, a voice echoed in my head, advice from A TED Talk, or a conference speaker, or a book I read some time. “Be the change you want to see.” I approached my failure with renewed resolve. I would do it. I would be a victim. “I have to go now,” said one of my friends. This was my chance. “Okay,” I cried in my best, almost-in-tears voice. “Okay, just go. Just go and leave me here in my sorrow. Just put other commitment above your loyalty to me. Yes, you’ve go. Just go!” My friends were trying to be quiet. They’re a compassionate lot, after all. But they couldn’t be quiet. They were giggling. There’s nothing more difficult than being a victim when your best and most compassionate friends are giggling. So I gave up the task of trying to find the proper order for hoping coping and moping. I didn’t really have time for it anyway. I had to plan a keynote speech. Still, when I get the time, I am hoping to become a better victim, a more effective moper. Apparently it isn’t as easy as it’s made out to be. It will take some focus, some dedication, some learning. I am kind of looking forward to it. Learning new things always gives me hope.

KITTY COUNSELLING

Kitty: My life is a mess. Me: Oh, I am sorry to hear that. What seems to be the trouble? Kitty: the couple I live with got married. Me: And I’ll bet that caused all kinds of stress. Getting married, you know, is one of the key stressors on the lists they give to us psychologists. Did it make them grumpy? Kitty: Not really. They seemed unusually happy. Me: Well that’s nice then. But you were telling me about your messed up life. Kitty: They went away on a long trip. I think they called it a honeymoon. Me: Oh, I see how that was stressful. You likely felt mistreated by the people who cared for you. Kitty: Not really. They fed me on time and let me out whenever I wanted to go. I know the people well. Our apartment is in their house. They let me walk on the furniture and they were friendly when I put my nose on the computer keyboard. They didn’t say anything when I threw up on the rug. They petted me and I rubbed their legs. I could sleep in my own bed. Me: Well, that’s good. But kitty-sitters never rreally replace your own people. you must have thought your people were gone forever. Kitty: Not exactly. They called up on FaceTime most days. I could hear their voices and see their pictures. They talked to me. Me: Oh, that’s good. But I understand they are back now. Were you glad to see them? Kitty: Oh yes. Me: Well, that’s good. I’ll bet you celebrated. Kitty: Absolutely. For the first couple of days I asked to go out every second minute. Then I ran away, and I did a bit of hissing and arm scratching when they caught me. Then I ran away again and I stayed away until it got dark and I hardly hissed and scratched at all when they found me. Me: How are things now? Kitty: My people are just impossible to live with. I’m grounded. I’m not speaking to them. Like I said, my life is a mess, and it’s all their fault. Just another day in the life of a counselling psychologist!

THE POWER OF POETRY

I’ve been feeling a little blue lately, not quite perky enough to write on THE HOPE LADY Blog. Today I decided to see what would happen if I wrote a poem of complaints. Here goes.

It’s hard to be hopeful in winter
When the wind is cold
And the snow is falling
And the ground is slippery
And you’ve never cared much for winter.

It’s hard to be hopeful when pain strikes
At a time when you just didn’t need it
And you find yourself taking medicine
And sitting since it hurts to stand
When you want to be making shortbread.

It’s hard to have hope when you’re angry
At all the machines in your life
That just aren’t working properly
Taking more from you than they’re giving
But you don’t want to live without them.

It wasn’t my idea to write a poem of complaints. The idea came from Yi Li at yesterday’s staff meeting. Yi Li is a hope scholar whose poetry is so good that one of her poems took a prize in a contest for poetry by new Canadians. She set out to write a letter to her landlord, detailing a list of complaints about the lack of maintenance at here place. But instead of writing your average complaint letter, she wrote a poem about the problems and sent it off to the landlord. She says that as the poem progressed, she began to feel more and more happy, a wondrous thing for a person so utterly annoyed about the intrusion of mice and the lack of refrigerator repair. Not only did it make her feel better, but the poem also got some pleasing results. Her landlord offered to let her break the lease without penalty.

Even on the coldest days, with your painkillers and your laptop giving you grief, it’s hard—maybe impossible--not to be hopeful when you go to the office and find Yi Li there!!!

BEFORE THE DAY IS OVER

Have you ever awakened to the certain knowledge that this is the day when a question will be answered? Today is such a day for me. By the time it ends, when the sun has fallen below the western horizon, I will know for sure whether blondes have more fun. Even as I sit here, writing at this very moment, a transformation is taking place. A change as subtle as the melting of winter into spring. It is one of those days I knew I would never see, and now it is here.

I was never going to colour my hair. “Grow old gracefully,” I exhorted. “Never be ashamed to be who you really are.” I was picturing a wise, silver-haired maven holding court for a dozen eager listeners. Silver hair meant wisdom.

But now I ask you, have you ever heard of anyone having silver roots? It seems they are grey when they poke their little heads out some time around your fortieth birthday. Silver, apparently comes later, maybe at age eighty.

The moment they appeared I ran to the drugstore. “Give me a colour exactly like the colour of these natural ends,” I gasped. And thus my hair got a name, Light Golden Brown, which everyone said was a little bit red, even more so under the summer sun. That was back in the days when there were only a few grey (excuse me, silvering) roots.

“Just how many silvering roots do you think there are?” I asked the girl who cut my hair last month. She was about twenty, tall, sophisticated, kind to old people like me.

“Oh,” she said diplomatically, “a few.”

“Give me a percentage,” I said. It seemed like this was the time when I could really face the truth, sitting there in a crowd of strangers, brushing severed hairs from my cheek, trying to keep them out of my coffee.

“Well,” she said, taking a long time. I imagine she was counting, “Well, half maybe.”

It shouldn’t have hurt me. I know it shouldn’t. These insidious markers of time’s passage have been there a dozen years, multiplying every week, maybe every day. But it did hurt me. I mean, I have thick hair, and experts say a thick-haired person has as many as 200,000 hairs. Cut that in half and you have 100,000 grey hairs, give or take 10,000. How would you like to have 100,000 grey hairs?

There are stages you go through when half your hairs are grey. First there is the numbness, then denial. Then comes anger, and then bargaining. “How about,” I said thoughtfully to my family one day, “how about I dye my hair grey so the roots won’t show so much!”

They laughed. They thought I was joking. I most certainly was not! “What will you do when the 100,000 brown roots start showing?” they wanted to know. Sometimes they can be maddeningly logical.

I was stumped. I had no words to answer. So I struck a different bargain. “How about I dye my hair blonde, something between the grey roots and the brown?”

They couldn’t think of an answer for that, or maybe they are just worn out from waiting for my silver-haired wisdom to set in. So today, as I write, my hair is losing its claim on Light Golden Brown. In only a few moments it will be Dark Ash Blonde. In a couple of months there will be 100,000 grey roots, and 100,000 brown roots, or maybe only 90,000 brown roots. But today, by the time the sun goes down, I will know if blondes have more fun.

THE RENOVATION BLUES

Oh please do forgive me for not making sense

My brain has been frazzled by fumes

They float up the stairs and come up through the vents

They suffocate all of the rooms.

The dog was annoyed that his doors were all blocked

He was limited only to one.

But that door deposits him outside the fence

So now his delight has begun.

The cat has discovered a thrilling new game

He waits for the dog to break free

And while I am chasing the dog down the alley

He is also escaping from me.

Our kitchen has moved to the bathroom upstairs

The coffee pot stands on the ground

The sink is for cleaning our dishes and teeth

The toilet lid has to stay down.

And I am the grumpiest woman alive

Rebelling against sacrifice

Rehearsing the story that will tell how I suffered

Just to keep our sweet home looking nice.

WANTING TO HAVE IT ALL

From the Dixie Chicks lyrics: "Am I The Only One (Whose Ever Felt This Way)"

 

There Is No Good Reason

I Should Have To Be So Alone””

 

I wanted to get tickets the moment I heard that the Dixie Chicks were coming to Rexall Place.  I was a little sorry about the venue.  This over-sized hockey rink is not exactly a citadel of acoustic perfection.  But Neil Diamond sang for me there, and his music kept me on my feet cheering through most of the second half.  And when Sarah McLaughlin sang for me in that place, it took twenty-four hours for me to emerge from the dreamy pleasure of her mellow sound.  A Dixie Chicks concert seemed like just the place where I would want to spend $120.  In my mind’s imagination I heard three beautiful voices entwined in soft feminine harmonies, lightly dancing among shades of violin and banjo.  I heard the sweet words that bring me to tears, the stories about lost love and little girls who fall for doomed soldiers. 

 

Our $120 put us up in the nosebleed section, a healthy climb, not for the faint of heart.  But then, though we were not the oldest people present, the crowd was much younger than we had expected.  We had been in our seats not more than a few moments when the aisles began to fill with strapping young men carrying trays of beer.  Within half an hour those same aisles vibrated with the descent of the hoards who now needed the washroom. 

 

Amid the action, three women came out on stage, exchanging instruments during the applause.  A noise roughly equivalent to the roar of an earthquake filled the place.  Amid the din the vague shapes of familiar songs reached out to claim the ear, then receded in the chaos.  Words and instruments disappeared entirely in the roar of the back-up band and the buzz of the sound system.  Deaf from the pounding of the music, I had no idea what they said between the songs when the applause died down. 

 

Bombardment is the word that seems to describe the experience.  At some point we made a conscious decision to avoid the danger of being trampled by the beer carriers and bathroom seekers on the steps, even though it meant suffering through to the end.  Having attended an event with $12,000 other people I felt curiously alone.  On the way out I heard a young girl say she had cried during the sad song about the soldier.  The newspaper said the Dixie Chicks were a real crowd pleaser.  After all, they mentioned the Oilers and everybody cheered.  I recalled their mentioning the Oilers, but I can’t remember if I cheered.

 

By mid-afternoon the next day, with my hearing partially restored, and the waste of $120 partially forgiven, I played my old CDs.  There they were, those harmonious voices, those clear-as-a-bell instruments.  They were whole.  They were magnificent.  They were just as wonderful as I remembered.  They were not gone forever. 

 

I have learned a lesson about wanting to have it all.  My Dixie Chicks are back in my ears now, and I’ll never try to see them in concert again, not even if they come to the Winspeare.  Well, maybe if they come to the Winspeare.