ORPHANED

This evening I feel I should be cooking up some of the fish that I need to have ready for my Family’s Annual Christmas Eve Dinner. I have been told however, that cooking it tomorrow, just before we eat, is much more sensible and will keep it from drying out. This good advice, which comes from much better cooks than me, causes me a great deal of anxiety.

I’ll admit that the fish isn’t really the cause of the anxiety. Even the fact, that by some miracle, 12 meatless (hot and cold) dishes will somehow be ready at the same time, isn't the whole concern either. 

What troubles me today is the changing dynamics within my immediate family. The fact that one brother and his wife are in Florida on holiday this year; that another sister and her husband and my young niece also have decided not to come this year as well, are really much more disappointing. 

Officially, part of these changing attendees aren’t totally surprising since a set of misunderstandings a couple of years ago, destroyed/altered lifelong family traditions a great deal among a couple of families. However, this year, like many of my friends and relatives, I finally also am being forced to accept that some of these problems may not ever be resolved.

We all become Orphans eventually. I was quite proud that when my Father died in 1986, my Mother continued to celebrate important Family occasions and traditions continued. Since several members of my family were married at the time Dad died, Christmas Eve became a day we could count of everyone attending.This made Christmas Day the time the In-laws celebrated together.

With the death of one brother in 1994 and my Mother a year later, we could still be pretty happy and proud that we all attended Christmas Eve each year and generally alternated the venue in sequence between each other for Christmas and Easter.

I suppose I can still feel encouraged that it took our family about 20 years more than that of most of my friends to have to deal with defections, some not attending and some arguments that may not be resolved.

Perhaps, as my closest friend has done for the last several years, I also will decide that an occasion that is important to me is one I will ask others close to me to celebrate. I will call everyone around me, particularly members of my immediate family, and tell them the date and time and welcome them to join me.

This year also we mourn our oldest living relative in our immediate family. He was someone who grew up with my father here in Toronto. He later married my mother’s sister (my godmother). It doesn’t matter that he was 97 when he died on December 21^st and had lived a full and fulfilled life. My parents entire generation has now passed on. We are orphans again.

I think that as I remember my uncle at the services tomorrow, I will give thanks that we had our families with us for as long as we did and be grateful to the previous generation which did it’s best to show us how to live, both at times we were celebrating, as well as, at the times when we needed to grieve.

Then, I will have no choice but to race home to prepare the fish and the other 12 meatless dishes that are our tradition for Christmas Eve. 

Join me briefly in remembering the many Christmas’ and important holidays in our pasts. Celebrate, enjoy, savour and appreciate with me all of the happy times this year.

Beyond enjoying Christmas and the Holiday Season and the New Year, I hope that you and I can perhaps leave a bit of room to imagine and anticipate the plans we intend always to make to be together with those we love. 

If you can, you will also probably be able to join me in your imagination in thinking of the many more happy times you and those you love will share together in the coming years.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and a very happy and healthy Holiday Season leading into a fine New Year.

APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING

Real life is stranger than fiction. Sunday night once again proved the truth of this to me.

Several times in the past I have written about apparently homeless men who live nearby. Because I live in the centre of a large city, and possibly also because the Salvation Army has an outreach centre nearby, several men spend most of their days on the corners a couple of blocks away from where I live.

A regular stop to a small (usually overcrowded) McDonald's location on my way home, led into a man and his son sitting at an adjacent table telling me a lot about our local street people. Much of what they had to say I could not have imagined.

It turns out that one fellow who has occupied one corner for the past few years has been arrested because he attacked an elderly woman with a knife. She had told him not to feed the pigeons. Particularly now with the scaffolding blocking ‘his’ corner already, this was creating even more of a problem than he, and the pigeons, normally do.

I never imagined that his brother occupied and lived on the opposite corner across the road. This brother did not bother anyone and kept to himself. Problematically however, the one near the scaffolding, would cross the road and fight with his brother. I suppose this was in between smoking and working on his suntan.

Perhaps we might have sensed a change was coming because a couple of weeks ago, a tirade of filthy words came my way as I passed by suntanned brother. Since he had never spoken to or at me before, I was very surprised. In any case, he has gone to jail. I have been told that his quieter brother has been taken into a shelter.

Meanwhile, The Blanket Man, who this year has become belligerent and vocal as well, turns out to be a member of a wealthy city family. Apparently, a friend and I were probably not mistaken in thinking he had a home/house nearby. He was ‘cleaned up’ once in order to attend a family funeral I am told. However, I expect that this was some time ago since usually he is either sockless or shoe less even in winter and only occasionally changes his outfits. More about him in 2016.

I am confused. It does not get any easier to distinguish who really needs help from among our local homeless corner people. A gift to a shelter or towards an organization that feeds these men and others like them is thus far all I can think of.

I resign myself to the fact that it is at least something that I can do which might possibly be of help to them and/or those who understand better what might actually be of practical help to these men, who appear to have some problems physically and perhaps also mentally.