(King's Grave in Sweden)
Depression is a Black Hole that makes me think always of Alice in Wonderland. Fall down it and you will be in a strange universe where none of the rules are known and where danger can lurk everywhere. Nonsense becomes reality there. I fear Depression with a vengeance. When I was a child, my mother always threatened us with the dire results of embarking on any journey into what she defined as insanity, which had a very wide range of anything from liking the colour purple too much to being depressed or chronically unhappy. She spoke frequently about a woman named Royal who threw her baby from a window and who represented the ultimate model of insanity.
When I was quite young, I spent a night once in a place that was devoted primarily to the insane. The very next morning, I was told by the doctor that it had been almost a crime to send me there, that I had no business whatsoever in that place... thankfully, but the fear was embedded in me then for life. More than anything else, I fear those medications that are given to change the workings of the brain, to alter one's psyche chemically. Too many medical professionals now seek to force so-called anti-depressants down the throats of pain patients. I adamantly refuse any drug of that nature. Pain is not equal to Depression. One can fight pain constantly and still fight for the Light.
Yet, New Year's Eve usually makes me sad and the days afterwards tend to be bad days for me. I lived far from my family often when I was young and I remember far too many New Year's Eves spent alone or with strangers. The hype about the holiday makes it worse for people who are alone frankly. Had it not been for all of that, I could have spent that evening alone happily with a good book or some project... but no. One had to feel utterly alienated from the world, listening to the sounds of rejoicing everywhere else.
At University, the Halls were nearly empty during the Christmas holidays. It depended on the schedule that year. In some cases, one could remain there over the holidays but in other years, the University rented out the Hall to a Conference of some sort and one had to leave. I always was a bit surprised by the way my friends often would ignore the fact that my own family was thousands of miles away... and basically lfet me alone to fend for myself over Christmas and the New Year. For everything that my own family does wrong, we always have been extremely hospitable to strangers and people who are living far from their families, especially students. Many of our own Christmas celebrations and New Year celebrations were shared with foreign students... no such reciprocity existed for me for the most part.
I am not saying that I spent every Christmas and the New Year alone during my university years and the years thereafter when I did not live near my family but there are far too many memories of lonely holidays really. Perhaps other people in the same situation do better because they care less. I do know that the 'magic' of Christmas always meant a great deal to me and still does.
My family is heavily invested in Christmas, Twelfth Night, Easter and even St. Valentine's Day to some extent. I am grateful for that, even while it can make life more difficult if one is alone. Now, thankfully, I do not have to spend those holidays alone... although it may be a battle sometimes and if I were not capable of decorating, no one else would do it I suspect.
Today is the Eve of the Epiphany. As children, Twelfth Night was the one day when we were allowed to have our own party with guests who were our own age. We celebrated with a cake that had a bean in it, and crowned the person who found the bean either King of the Bean or Queen of the Bean. That individual then chose his/her consort while blindfolded.
We put out our shoes for the Three Kings. Later, having discovered that, in some lands, children left carrots for the donkey and camels, we did the same. In the morning, we would find our shoes filled with coins, chocolates and a small gift.
Christmas Eve is the other 'magical' event when one awakens to find stockings filled with chocolates, clementines and small gifts. One must leave an offering for Santa and his reindeer on Christmas Eve as well as a letter.
When Freya was little, I took her to the Mall where Santa sat enthroned in a little booth dispensing good cheer to all. Children were queued up to tell him what they wanted for Christmas while they sat on his lap and had a photo taken of the event. When we arrived, though, Santa was ducking out of the booth and headed for an ice cream shop. Freya wanted an ice cream as well and wanted to see Santa... we witnessed him buying a milkshake for himself and he returned Freya's greeting and wished her a happy Christmas.
From that point onward, Freya insisted that we make a milkshake for Santa every Christmas Eve, so the milkshake of eggnog and ice cream was added to the plate of sweets and the carrots for the reindeer.
Yet I have not even mentioned the King's Grave in Sweden. It is an incredible burial mound from the
Bronze Age, a double burial with fabulous carvings on stone. It is situated in the province of Skane near Kivik.
I am given an incredible sense of peace whenever I have entered a burial mound. When I visited Tarquinia over a decade ago, I was quite disabled and had difficulty walking. The driver of the car suggested I wait at the top of the stairs, but what point in that? One sees nothing. When I expressed as much, he helped me down the stairs over and over so that I could visit all the chambers one by one.
The Etruscans, like many ancient people, had a fabulous method of burial which included a bed for the deceased and a dining table and benches for the living AND deceased. The family would visit their beloved dead regularly (one hopes), bearing good and drink. You can see the same practice in contemporary Mexico on the Day of the Dead. It is good to commune with the dead. The ancient Northern people would perform a ritual on the burial mounds of heroes, kings and dead family members, seeking a visitation, sleeping there through the night or a couple of nights if necessary until a vision or visitation occurred.
Most people in our Western cultures do not look at Death or the Dead in the same fashion. When graves are visited, flowers are placed and perhaps prayers made but there is no ritual that opens the gates to the other realm. Obviously, those fabulous burial mounds and mausoleums were reserved for the rich and powerful but at least every one had the concept of communion with the dead and celebrations with the dead in their psyches.
The irony for me is that going underground gives me a sense of wellbeing and peace, whether it is spelunking or walking through a cave system or burial system beneath the earth. I never have feared that darkness. The darkness I fear is above ground, in the atmosphere that is supposed to be ruled by the sun. Below ground, I am happy to embrace the velvet black of a cave or mound. Light is welcome to explore different areas but I love to sit in the utter blackness of a cave or mound, to feel enveloped in it. THAT is NOT depression.
They moved my father's grave without even telling us and they continue to deny the fact, even though more than one family member has vivid memories of its original placement. 'As a matter of fact, he was buried in my mother's family's section of a graveyard originally. Now a plaque that was purchased by some half-siblings evidently marks a spot where he was not originally interred and God only knows if any of his bones are beneath it. Probably not. The West has little respect for the Dead.
Nor is there a sense of community between the generations. Part of the reason for the dining tables and the bed in the mausoleum was to continue a relationship that existed while the deceased remained still alive and a part of his or her family. Death was the portal to another world BUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DECEASED AND FAMILY REMAINED VIBRANT AND UNINTERRUPTED.
How different our culture where we send our elders to a nursing home or retirement community long before they expire. We do not visit them there. Why then would we visit the House of Death once they move onward.
In so many cases, the family is eager for the old person to die. No time they say, to care for him or her and yet they resent the cost of keeping that individual in a nursing home, retirement home or hospice.
I see the same issue with children when both parents work. In many cases, neither is willing to give up his or her job for a few years to become a full time parent. The child is sent almost immediately to a day care facility or creche. Often the cost of that care is equal to the wages earned by one of the parents but it is more important to keep the job than to give the child the experience of having a father or mother at home with him or her.
I look at the Barrows in England, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia and the Tomb Houses of the Etruscans and the Maltese and other ancient civilisations and I see that we not only have a very different perception of Death than they had but a very different perception of Life and Family. I personally do not think we have advanced at all spiritually or morally or in any emotional sense. It is we who are the true barbarians.
For what could be more elegant and civilised than to give a dinner party for some one beloved who is deceased. How better to celebrate Life than by ermbracing Death as part of a continuing existence. How much less would we fear Death if we invited the Dead to dine with us?
Instead, we cower from the vision of our own mortality. We are alienated at every stage of our lives: as children, as young adults and finally as old people.
One horrible aspect of this situation is that the elders often are forced to declare war against their natural heirs, to fight tooth and nail for their survival when in fact, all should share in whatever bounty the family possesses.
Once upon a time, a Family had an identity that transcended individual members. One laboured for the sake of the family honour, for the family in posterity. Now, the elders are aware that they often represent nothing more than a nuisance and a potential drain on the wealth of the younger members and they quite understandably lose any desire to leave anything behind. It is a bizarre and unnatural situation but it is quickly becoming the rule rather than the exception.
