THE STAR SHINES
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Every Christmas season I look for the
star at the top of our neighbor’s high fir tree. There was one Christmas
season several years ago when I wondered whether that star would be there.
Jason, their high school age son, had recently died. The house had been
mostly dark ever since. I didn’t know whether they would be there for Christmas
that year.
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People handle such losses in different
ways. They hear folk advice like “Time heals all wounds,” and “Let
go and move on with your life.” A lot of this comes from the influence
of Freud who taught those in grief to separate themselves from the
one who is died and let go of the past. If you know the story of Freud you
have heard how he couldn’t live by his own advice when his son died. He remembered
and grieved for his son all his life. Love does not forget.
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But one night the neighbor’s star was
shining against the darkness. I wrote at the time about “Jason’s Star.”
That’s what the neighbors all call it now, and so does Jason’s family. They
have turned it on each season since. It’s there now. And so is memory of
Jason.
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I believe that story plays out in scores
of homes every Christmas. I’m getting notes from a lot of people who are
facing Christmas without someone precious. Pain and emptiness fill with
special memories. Love puts up a star to remember by.
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A few weeks ago I wrote about my pain
in deleting names of friends who have died from my mailing label and e-mail
lists. Dick Wing wrote that he leaves the names on his Palm Pilot so that
he is reminded of them. There is no reason to forget love or let it end.
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There is a new custom being promoted
these days ─ pre-decorated Christmas trees. It’s easy, but it takes away
some special moments. We have decorations that remind us of people who
are only present in our memories. It is warming to be reminded.
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As I fasten on blue sheet labels I
remember some circumstances of people. More than a few are for people in
confinement of one sort of another. Maybe it’s a health issue, a life situation
issue, or some other situation that separates from where they want to be
or from those they want to be with. I was reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
“Letters and Papers from Prison.” He was a pastor in prison toward the
end of WWII for participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler. He writes
about the separation that many feel at Christmas:
“Nothing can fill the gap when we are away from those we love…The
dearer and richer our memories,
the more difficult the separation…The
beauties of the past are not endured as a thorn in the flesh,
but as give precious for its
own sake. We must not wallow in our memories or surrender to them,
just as we don’t gaze all the
time at a valuable present, but get it out from time to time, and for the
rest
hide it away as a treasure we
know is there all the time.” (p. 120)
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I don’t know how many can deal with
their emptiness like that, but that’s the way he managed it in his circumstance.
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There are many I know that deal with
Christmas like Silas Marner in that classic little book I often read at
Christmas. He was urged to attend church on Christmas Eve by Dolly. Even
a sample carol sung by young Aaron didn’t sway him. She went to church
without him.
“And so Silas spent his Christmas day in loneliness, eating his meat with
sadness of heart.”
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Some refuse to put up the lights. Others light a star.
─ Art Morgan, Christmas 2007
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