Christmas 2016 (General)

by David Turell , Saturday, December 24, 2016, 18:49 (2890 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Even for us agnostics, Christmas is a great time simply for the pleasures of family reunions, contacting old friends, giving and receiving gifts. Sometimes I try to pen an ode to that effect, but this year I can’t do it because I find myself overflowing with conflicting emotions. I’ll share them with you because for me they illustrate the great ambivalence that surrounds most aspects of our lives.

It was between Christmas and the New Year three years ago that my wife – who had a terminal form of cancer – suffered two strokes, the second of which left her totally unconscious. She died on 8 January. (In an unforgettable gesture of friendship and empathy, David and his wife came to England from the States to attend her funeral.) The grief is as low as emotion can reach.

Susan I agree the pleasure was ours. We met wonderful people and at the same time could try to help support David at a terrible time of his life. By email I'd been through all of the medical struggles Lisbeth and he endured over a two-plus year period. During that terrible time we had worked on a book together that he had proposed to me as author and he as editor. I agreed and then found out how tough he is as editor, but I persevered and it was created while she was fighting her cancer and published before her death. We had to come to the funeral.

Susan and I plan, if ever on the way to somewhere European, we will stop in Taunton to renew our friendship personally. That is a requirement. In the meantime I do not plan to stop the theological battle, of course, in the friendliest of fashions.