Season of Darkness

I went to a funeral today. Not something I had planned on doing, three shopping days before Christmas. The death was unexpected and shocking. The younger brother of a close friend of mine had committed suicide. He'd shot himself, leaving behind a wife, three young children, and heartbroken parents and siblings. I had a hard time accepting this news. It lay somehow outside of me for days, like rainwater pooling on the surface of saturated soil.

I went to the service to help shoulder my friend's grief. I didn't bring enough tissue. The church was bright and cold. Not everyone wore black. The widow was a crumpled mass in the front pew, a marionette with broken strings. Mourners passing the coffin laid hands on the closed lid, gently, as though in comfort. A little girl, oblivious, patted at the water in the baptismal font.

The service was oddly sanitized. There was standing and kneeling and recitation and incense, but no mention of the act itself. No whisper of a pain so mighty that the plump arms of a toddler were powerless against it. No mention of the fact that, in the Catholic church, despair is the unforgivable sin. Just the gall of the silent coffin, a draped package stamped 'return to sender'.

I don't know what demons tormented this young man. It seems to me, though, that he had quite the choice. We are living in dark times. The 21st century crusades are well underway, with fresh atrocities served up daily. The ice cap and the economy are both crumbling. Emotionally, we are worn thin as the heel of an old sock. It is the darkest season of the year. We light our trees, and our menorahs, and our candles, in hope and defiance, and sometimes, this is enough. But would that the priest had acknowledged the hard truth that, sometimes, the darkness wins.

I got caught in shoppers' traffic on the way home, trapped at endless red lights with swarms of people desperate to prove their love to one another with suddenly vital objects wrapped in shiny paper. I twisted the radio dial to hard rock, and listened through two songs about the glory of guns, before giving in to the soothing pap of carols.

I went to a funeral today, one day past solstice. I know the sun is inching its way back towards the world, but it's still too early to believe.