The Why? Christmas

When fear takes over, few things are right. Most things go wrong, and a small percentage of things just keep you going.

It was a Why? Christmas like no other, where everything was wrong, even the things that kept you going.

She called at the wrong times. Said the wrong words. Said them in the wrong tone. Bought the wrong plane ticket. Wanted to offer the wrong help. Yet all she wanted was to do the right thing, so why did it all go wrong?

When they fell ill, she was afraid to travel, but she bought a ticket. It was the wrong ticket she bought, but she did not know how ill they were. She can’t forgive this, because in her mind’s eye How? is not a question when it’s about her parents. They were ill. So it was wrong.

When she spoke to them, they were angry because she was talking ambulances and hospitals, and this is wrong for your old strong-minded parents who just got back from walking the mountains. They fell ill, but they were sure to overcome the illness. They did not want to talk to her because she was wrong to interfere. In her heart she knew: her parents thought she was wrong to be so far away from them in the first place.

When her Dad called early in the morning that her Mum had died, it was all wrong, because she did not manage to pick up the phone on time. It was wrong because Mums don’t die like that.

She bought a new plane ticket and flew to her, without thinking.

She arrived and all of a sudden, the right things happened by themselves. The right people answered her calls, the right workings were arranged, the right doctors in the right wards came to speak to her, the right cars and employees turned up at the right time talking about humanity and kindness. She asked for a priest, but the pandemic would not allow it. Yet a priest was present at the funeral, out of the blue, as if Mum had called him herself. The right way. From above.

She was saying, thinking, doing everything wrong. The right things just were. Right.

She said “Farewell, Mummy” and was told that this was the wrong thing to say as she was going to see her again some time, once up in heaven, so Why Farewell? She could not manage to right the wrong, her eyes bleeding with pain at the cemetery where she had been looking after the graves of her grandparents over some years. Now her Mum was resting with them.

In Peace? Who knows? New questions adding to the Why? and the How?

Few friends called at all. She must have been so very wrong in everything she had assumed for the past thirty years. The friends who called and cared were the ones she had left behind as a child and teen. The friends from the past twenty years of work and family building, they did not call at all to offer support or solace. The friends were silent because she had been wrong, so very wrong, especially when she had called to offer solace when their mothers or fathers had fallen ill or died. She had called and visited and brought food and help, but she must have been wrong. People don’t ask for that. She was alone because she was wrong.

She worried about her children, and they said that was wrong. They need their independence, even if at the risk of infection, they said. Wrong as a daughter, wrong as a mother, because she wanted to control the uncontrollable too much. She wanted to keep them safe, but she could see now how wrong that was in the eyes of 18 or 20-somethings.

So she took the first plane back, her father still in hospital, improved and ready to come home. But this was wrong, said the neighbours. It was wrong to leave him alone, even if the airports were closing for Christmas flights with the pandemic reaching a new peak. The daughter can sacrifice a Why? Christmas and cannot be afraid to fall ill. The daughter is not a mother in her father’s home. Wrong to leave him alone as the right thing to do was to wait for him, alone, in the empty motherless flat.

She came home to her children, afraid for her health, wrongly worried, but expecting to be summoned back to working for other people’s children as nobody at work should mention the unspeakable. We cannot talk about the risk to teachers. It is wrong to ask for protection when your vocation asks for sacrifice.

She is wrong at every step and she asks for forgiveness in her sleep, twenty times a night. She is afraid and she is wrong to be afraid and she asks for forgiveness for being afraid.

This is how Why? Christmas happened. There has not been a Because…Christmas yet, because Christmas is over now, with no answers. This Christmas will remain a Why? Christmas, which means that from now on all Christmases will be Why? Christmases because the answer never came. Even if it comes later, it will be at the wrong time. After Christmas.

So it is wrong to ask for forgiveness. Unless she manages to forgive herself.

8 January 2021