A Christmas Letter To My Parents

I dedicate this Christmas to you
Mom and Dad.
You didn't love me perfectly
in many ways you fell short -
years of therapy speak to that.
But you knew how to love us
at Christmas.

It seemed that everything you were
and everything you did,
the rest of the year,
was cultivated and held tight
until it burst forth at Christmas - 
Mom's talent for cooking and making things beautiful,
Dad's for making and managing money,

and as you got older
you seemed to get younger
with a mischievous delight
in conjuring and conspiring
to cast a magical spell on all of us at Christmas.

I suppose the truth of you,
the most essential Is-ness of you
expressed Itself best at Christmas,

and that energy, that magic, lives in me:
It would have to. Sixty-three years
of the heady stuff, seeping into me,
sponge that I was (and still am).

And now I'm home alone on
Christmas Day, full of your love,
full of your magic, bursting open
with something that cannot be named
only felt - a joy, a right-ness,
a light that lives and is always here,
yet seems especially bright at Christmas,

because you were here, because you loved,
because you simply be'd you, and allowed,
for whatever reason, the light of Christmas
to break you open and bless us all.

And now it lives in me, as me,
just as it lived as you.

So you see? You never died.
The house is sold and you're both buried,
but you're here, in me. And the magic you made
lives through my hands and my heart and 
my words, blessing others . . . forever.

See what you did?

I love you.

​Merry Christmas.

​

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More Christmas posts:

Your Light
The Light Of Awareness