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Writer's pictureNathan Coley

The Language of Leaving

The ghosts from my Christmas past keep following me. They visit every year, without fail, and each memory makes me think:   This way of things; these family, these friends, these settings—they are all reminders that the stuff that warms our hearts has an expiration date.


The language that I have used for my ghosts, and for all of the transient good things in my life, is this:  “This will all go away, or so and so will leave.


When I say “leave,” I don’t mean to say that circumstances and people have identified me and immediately developed an exit strategy (though this very thing seems to have happened at times). For me, this is just the language by which I understand the fact that many things in life are only meant to be there for a season and not a moment longer.


When things are done and over, they are often done and over. I suspect that American culture, in particular, has a difficult time accepting this. We are the culture of the extended warranty. If you want to do something, there’s probably a cell phone application that can help. When we visit retailers, we are told (often) that we have an absurd amount of time to decide on whether we like the product. We like what we like, for as long as we want to like it, and we don’t like our parties being cut short.


But things that are over are over, and the ghosts linger, all of them carrying the same reminder:


Whatever, or whoever this is, it is going to end and you will be left alone.”


In the first haunt I am a little boy, perhaps five or six years old, smothered in blankets during the early hours of Christmas morning. There is so much excitement swirling inside me that I cannot sleep. I stare at the door, in the dark, listening to the grandfather clock on the other side of the wall chime and tick. During these moments, carefully wrapped presents, all bearing the names of myself and my old brother, find their way under the Christmas tree.


I am dressed in full body fleece pajamas. My Christmas stocking, mounted on the banister to the stairs, is green, with an embroidered Care Bear on the front, is packed full, and treats and trinkets stretch the fabric. This is a morning where everything seems possible.


In my next haunt I am at home, in my room, watching Christmas specials on a 13-inch Zenith TV.  In the moment, a famed commercial for a local Pittsburgh area diner plays, showing the struggle of a Christmas Tree topper as it tries to mount itself. I know how this one ends and I smile every time, watching as the tree finally bends over to give the star a little help.


Sometimes I think all I want for Christmas is a little help. Whatever that means.


Haunt number three finds me in church on December 24th, lining the perimeter of a darkened sanctuary. I am 10. Everyone in attendance holds a lit candle as they sing the last song they will sing before Christmas Day: Silent Night. In this haunt everyone is either quiet or singing, and all leave in silence and contemplation. I have been here many times, and the song and mood is always the same.


As I approach haunt number four, I can smell my grandmother’s cooking from her apartment kitchen. I am a picky eater at Grandma’s on Christmas, and so much so that certain foods and proteins are set aside just for me. On the freezer sits a tin of thin, bread like cookies—pitzels. They smell so bad that I will never eat one; all the same, the remembrance of the smell is comforting.


When Grandma and her Christmas dinners aren’t around anymore, you take the smells that you can get and you find comfort in them.


Up and away we go to the last haunt: the home that my grandfather lived at during the final years of his life.


To say that Christmas here is special is something of an understatement. It is like something out of a book, so full of life and love that it hardly seems real. I knock on the window of the storm door, which displays red and green window clings that are tacky, but also charming.


Nice things that we experience on a regular basis would be my working definition of “charming.”


Back to the haunt:


My grandfather grins as he opens the door. He always knows we are coming, but puts on the half act of a surprise. If I close my eyes and concentrate enough, I can still hear that laugh and expression; facsimile bewilderment that really says: I love my grandchildren.


To walk into his living room on Christmas evening is to step into another world. On chairs, tables, and sofas sit perfectly arranged towers of packages, all of them with the look of something fun, sparkling, and inviting. I do not know it while I am there year after year, but these displays are more for him than for us; in his heart he knows we will eventually forget about many of these remembrances. Surely he has been around long enough to know that.


Yet the presents keep coming, the same way, as long as he is able.


Until he is gone and not able anymore.


In my language? He puts on these displays until it is time to move on and leave me.


The older I get, the more holiday conversations are forced into an acknowledgment of the departed; for most people, this makes each passing year challenging, and to the point where the Christmas season can feel like drudgery.


My ghosts are memories; beautiful, shining memories in which I shamelessly redact all of the yuck and remember things as I would prefer to; in this sense my Christmas ghosts are wonderful. I have crafted and curated these ghosts to serve what I want: memories that I am not willing to let go.


These ghosts serve me well, but they are also stark reminders of how fragile and temporal our lives are; even ideal scenarios fade out and die away, forcing us to scramble and recreate our world through memories. And I know that I am not (at least in some sense) talking sense. I know that someone’s departure is just that: a departure, and that the “language of leaving me” distorts my view of the world. Things start and stop, and that’s just how it is.


All the same, I would rather nobody leave me behind ever again. That’s my Christmas wish in 2023.







Yours Mentally,



Nathan


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