One Last Christmas

Grandad’s fading, his health is getting bad

No one says it, but the adults feel sad.

Not yet nineteen, I’m sure it all will pass

What do we have to fear?

Just give me this, our one last Christmas

Something to remember, next year.

*

Australian summer, Christmas on the beach

We feel immortal, though Death’s not out of reach.

A funeral six months ago, we had the Requium Mass

Life’s not fair, but surely we get a break...

Oh give us this, just one last Christmas

Memory to cling to each time I wake

*

14 years later, now I know the signs

But we all pretend, through toasts of beer and wine

Movies ‘round the fire, go with him to Mass

Joy and laughter, as the time flies by

Gods give me this, a final Christmas

Soften the grief I know draws nigh

*

The last five years, we’ve all been through a lot

Black Summer, Pandemic… can Fate just not?

Trying to stay hopeful through each diagnosis

But you aren’t the one in a box of pine,

Please give me this, just one last Christmas

Something to keep for all of time

Christmas tends to be a rough time for me, because it's intristically tied up in remembring the people who are no longer here to celebrate it with me, and wondering how many more Christmases I'll have with the ones who are left. I treasure each moment with them, because if life has taught me anything, it's that nothing is permanent.

People come and go, circumstances change, and one day memories will be all that you have to remember them by.

I lost my grandfather after a long, slow decline and my twin to drowning within six months of each other. Nana was another slow decline ten years after that, and I only knew my step-Grandfather for a handful of years. I was old and experienced enough to recognise the signs, then, but he passed away a month before what I knew was going to be my final trip to see him. I managed to make it back for the funeral.

Everyone lost people during the Plague Years, or in the Black Summer bushfires that preceeded it. Once a vaccine was developed, it honestly felt like we were past the worst of it, but in those five years, I think many of us forgot that people could die of other things, too.

Last year was a year of Health Scares for my loved ones, culminating in the sudden but not entirely unexpected death of the closest thing I had to an older brother in the first days of December.

This song was a way to deal with my Complicated Emotional State.

It’s been a rough year, so while I’d like to have a more joyful poem, cautious hope is the best I can do right now...

I wish I was better at music, because this felt more like a song than a poem when I was writing it, but I can't carry a tune in a bucket, so it will remain unsung.