Holiday blues//Capacity for Love

I've been feeling sort of depressed over the last few days.

Perhaps depressed is the wrong word. Melancholy, bummed, out of sorts... everything's been tinged with an edge of unhappiness.

Haven't been able to get to the bottom of the why's. Maybe it's the average Christmas blues. Maybe it is the sense of connection/non-connection with family. The moments of being close in proximity to people, but maybe not so close in communication, point of view, etc. (mind you I haven't been talking that much so far, so that's likely part of it).

There's been other things, too. The niece & nephew are home for Christmas (along with their parents of course). The nephew is brand new & the niece I haven't seen since March. In these family gatherings I end up being the unofficial photographer. Part of it is just that I have a decent camera. Part's just that I remember to pick up the camera & snap away. But a lot of it is maybe just the storyteller heart coming out. Like a scribe, I end up chronicling our family gathering from behind the lens, taking stills & videos of each event; significant or insignificant. This chronicling comes partly from the desire to save the moment, to provide a history to hold on to for the times that we as a family are away from each other. The photographs only remind us of those we miss & never replace the gift of actual presence, but they do help hold you over for a bit until you can be with those you love again. Partly, too, the chronicling comes form my desire to 'bear witness' to these lives around me that matter to me. One could argue that to truly 'bear witness' I should put down the camera & interact better with my family, & I do that, too (sometimes - sometimes the distance behind the camera provides a safe buffer zone).

But in the middle of the chronicling, other thoughts have crept in. Some are good; like the thought that maybe some of these pictures will make it into a slide show at Elyssia's (my niece) wedding some day far in the future; shots showing what a cute, joy-bringing bundle of energy, imagination & laughter that she is/was. Other thoughts are not so good. Once or twice I've had the fleeting thought while video-ing my dad holding Garrison, my nephew, that these could be the last images of my dad that I could be holding on to. This I think is residuals from last years Christmas where we spent a lot of time with Dad in the hospital as he was dealing with heart problems. Dad's fine & bound to live a long, long time to come, but the fears are still there for me. I made it through last Christmas/New Years & stayed pretty strong for the family, but it all ate away at me. I'm not sure what I'd do if I lost my dad. It would crumble me... like waves devouring a sand-castle.... it would feel like my life would totally lose structure....

....and so perhaps part of the depression is standing around amongst people you love, but don't fully 'know', people who, like me, are not the best communicators & you can't really express things.... and yeah, really you can't ever express what your heart wants to say. You can say "I love you", but that seems to not mean so much. You can pour out yourself in gifts, in acts of kindness, in time, in whatever way you can & somehow it's never enough to express the depths of how much this person matters to you or how you hope you matter to them, too.....

In a similar vein, I've found that it's maybe love that's adding to this sense of depression. I've noticed I have spent more of the early parts of the holidays with Elyssia & have ignored Garrison a bit more. Elyssia's two & full of life (she's been nicknamed "the energizer bunny" around here 'cause she never stops). Her giggles are infectious and it's great to be able to play with her. She's old enough that I can mostly understand what she's saying & life is about playing or colouring or seeing Preston's gerbils or the kitties outside or just being silly. Garrison on the other hand is 6 weeks old & he sort of lays there & cries & gurgles & wiggles.... With Elyssia's first Christmas, she was the first grandkid in our family & so it was easy to lavish attention on her. Now it seems odd to split my heart & time to welcome in this new life.

Recognizing this, I've tried to spend more time with Garrison. He's been colicky & having problems & so I've taken to kind of holding him & walking around with him, either laying his back against my chest & holding him there so he can look around as I walk, taking in the world around him, or laying him face down on my chest, head turned out, face snuggled against my neck or looking out over my shoulder. A couple of times that I've done this over the last couple of days he's fallen asleep in my arms & I've ended up moving to just sit on the couch & let him sleep resting on my chest.

There's a story in the new testament where this woman with an 'issue of blood' touches Jesus's clothes in the middle of some crowd that's nearly smothering him. In the story, Jesus stops in the middle of the procession & goes, "Wait, someone's touched me, I can sense that virtue has gone from me".

I think I'm catching glimpses of what he meant. When I finally lay Garrison in his crib to let him sleep, I feel utterly drained. I feel like something has gone from me; some part of me has left me & been given to this little child. And I guess ultimately it's that somehow another piece of my heart is going out to this little one & he'll hold it with him for as long as he lives. Even as Elyssia, the other members of my family, & each of those people that I am lucky enough to call friend have a part of my heart for as long as they live (& beyond).

In Mike Mason's "The Mystery of Marriage", he has a chapter dedicated to the subject of "death" in marriage. In it he talks about the idea of "eulogizing the living", of living in the constant reality of our finiteness & living to say in the perpetual now the words of love that we so often neglect to say until after the beloved is gone. With this he also talks about how marriage in specific, but love in general, makes us more & more vulnerable to the effects of death. When we are alone & don't love anyone, we only fear for our own life. But with each new person that we love, we have to realize that they too are vulnerable to death's sting & with this, we realize that our hearts can be so easily broken as love spreads our heart into more & more pieces as we love more & more people. But, if I remember right, he talks about how much this is part of the bravery of love, the bravery of life that we gladly choose to risk love, risk loss, for the sake of the ones we love. Our love for them moves us from our selfishness to want to only worry about ourselves.

And so, again, I don't know fully this odd sense I have in my heart. Part of it's fear, maybe most of it's love. It's funny how that love can break you open... I wonder how much capacity the human heart has for love? Just how much love can one human hold? It seems that the heart has the capacity to grow & grow (sort of like the Grinch's heart), that somehow there is always room for the heart to swell with an ever increasing capacity to love; but sometimes it's the stretching that seems to hurt - like the chest cavity is going to explode under the pressure...