Strawberry Fields Forever (Red #46)
By: Jennifer Elise
Tags: Grief, Loss, Memories, Love, Childhood

And so this is Christmas.

Oh, John how the echo of your voice transports me through time and space. Gibran’s joy and sadness teetering in my chest, somewhere between my beating heart and aching lungs. I think I’ll be sure to include a sit at your memorial tomorrow given the fact that the place I’ve called home for so many years is (comfortingly) so close to your spirit.

Over the years, one of the doormen at the Dakota and I have gotten to know each other in that way New Yorkers do (because doormen are this year’s grounding theme in my Covid-free-fall — see last essay).

During my half-marathon days, heading to the park for my training runs, we became daily nodders. Then daily hello-ers. Eventually developing a neighborly intimacy through our shared knowing-glance-faintly-amused-side-eye on those days when, in order to pass by, I had to navigate the gawkers-with-cameras while he, forced to remain gracious as an ambassador to the scene of big death, tolerated the macabre fascination with his workplace. In rare moments when gawkers were few, we’d exchange a handful of words, usually about my run. Nothing too deep. But comfortingly familiar.

And so this is Christmas.

As a child, the resonance of that opening line sparked a kind of joy inside me that I only now know as a just-out-of-reach bliss. So visceral that my body can still touch it though my head refuses to allow me its full synthesis as an actual feeling. It lies in some beyond, in a dimension where I imagine (and hope) they all exist. John and my lost loved ones eating strawberries in a field somewhere.

And so this is Christmas.

The first place my mind wanders when I hear this line (or just think about it) is to the backseat of my childhood — my parents car, specifically, with a yellow Walkman in my hand. It’s the crack of dawn and we’ve just eaten Egg McMuffins. Sated, I sit next to my brother, my headphones on as we begin our yearly Christmas sojourn to Vermont.

I’m a Jew who adores Christmas music. War Is Over, Father Christmas, The Waitresses, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, The Pogues! Run DMC. Holding my yellow Walkman (sport model? waterproof?) I delight in my rockin’ Christmas soundtrack.

Writing now, I can almost still connect to that visceral sense of joy-to-my-world as we head to our happy place to celebrate my brother’s Christmas Eve Birthday. We are always with close friends. In snowy Vermont. Holding epic fireside book reads. Roaring with laughter. Eating great food. All the feels. All the people. Two of them now gone but so alive in my memories. Their voices. Their essence. Imprinted in a place just beyond the lump in my throat as I conjure them while writing this. Jeremy. Lori. If I listen to my rockin’ Christmas soundtrack, I can still touch them. I can hold them. They exist in my mind’s eye, in a recess of my heart. The music is a bridge to this other dimension with which I desperately yearn to connect.

And so this is Christmas.

So far this year there has been no rockin’ soundtrack to lead me into my Christmas feels. Even in the other imperfect years, I’ve had my rockin’ tunes to cling to, as Christmas music pumped through stores during holiday shopping or quietly streamed in the coffee shop during a post-run brunch or during a pre-holiday restaurant meal.

In its place there has been an emptiness. Everything so untenable. Regular life. Sensory objects. Connection. Comfort. Love. This virus, like a monster that has (almost) even managed to overtake my rockin’ Christmas memories and my highly developed coping strategies and rituals. (Almost) barricading the spiritual door to that internal place which, in years past, has still enabled me to enjoy Christmas, even through their deaths.

And so this is Christmas.

I woke up this morning and realized there is still time. And agency. I have one day to call it all to action. My rockin’ Christmas. A Christmas that feels like no other but is still semi-salvageable.

Personally, I can’t say it’s the worst Christmas. The worst Christmas was the year we had to celebrate the Christmas Eve birthday without the celebrant. It wasn’t really a celebration. It was instead like a stabbing honoring of what was no more. But I used my rockin’ Christmas tunes to survive it.

This year, we’ve got the tiny tree with lights. We’ve got the menorah in the (new apartment) window. We even have remnants of snow.

We’ve got negative Covid tests so there are five of us! My partner, my son and I plus our two new kitties, Wanda and Penelope.

Even in the midst of so much Without, we are still With.

I may not have my yellow Walkman, but I’ve got some of my people still here on earth with me. I’ve got FaceTime. And I’ve got Spotify to stream my rockin’ Christmas tunes. And I’ve got my plan to have a sit on a bench with my rockin’ soundtrack in Strawberry Fields with a coffee from my favorite (barely pandemic surviving) patisserie.

While there, I’ll conjure it all. The sensory artifacts of lost persons, past places and borrowed time. Summon loved souls to this dimension and invite the new ones we lost in this most terrible year. My own, the lost loves of friends and patients. Maybe I’ll have a good cry. The kind of cry that I’ve held in all these months as I’ve struggled to walk a straight line through this utter bleakness so that I might sit — as present as humanly possible during a worldwide pandemic — with patients in their joys and sorrows.

And so this is Christmas.

Thy will be done.