Music to Make Me Weep

One CD in my collection
played only at Yuletide,
for no more than a week,
brings me to tears
for all the Winter Festivals
gone past in 
since I was twenty.

Music to make me weep.

The disc only came to me
a quarter of a century ago, 
but it pulls all the memories
from the twenty plus years before,
the tears flow blurring vision
through which I see
like yesterday the Yuletide
I became engaged 
to my first husband,
and then the Christmases
we shared for a year
over a quarter of a century.

Music to make me weep.

The scene changes 
to the first Yule after
I met my second husband,
shared three thousand miles a
apart on the phone all
Christmas Day the same meal, 
and the same video after,
and the first one we were
together a year later
after his two young daughters
moved this at time to Ireland,
after the ten years in England and Orkney,
then the Yule alone,
after he left me for another.

Music to make me weep.

Finally,
six years ago in Bath,
the three cats and I 
with the man who became
husband three,
a big house in the city
and in then the years since
after the big house
to our place in the country,
a home to share
a life to cherish
a time of gratitude.

Music to make me weep.

This CD has taken me
through three lifetimes 
since I became an adult,
in such different places
all of which the music
slips into my memory holding
tenderly the remembrances
of joy and gladness, 
gingerly those of loss and pain;
for this is the power of music,  
to elicit emotion,
to recall events,
to jostle free recollections
of times and people
past and gone,
present and here,
into the future and yet to be
this CD will take me through
those Yuletides as well.

Music to make me weep.


The CD is Celtic Christmas II: A Windham Hill Collection

Winter’s Turning

The season turned some time ago,
slipping slowly since
into the hard cold grasp
of frost and ice,
now each morning
gilding the edges of the lawn’s
every blade with crystals
golden in the early sun.

Though the season turned some time ago,
only now does the
clinging cold clutch
at skin exposed however briefly
to the wind and marching vapour
rising from the fields
standing wet from recent soaking rain.

Since the season turned some time ago,
the days’ march onward
near the heart of Winter,
darkness’ descent dancing
from light into night swiftly
changing state as
Winter’s whimpers subtly alter to
melancholy whispers in the fading day.

The midseason approaches,
deepest velvet night
replaces shallow satin day,
but soon they swap their places
gradually longer days
for incrementally shorter nights,
as the wheel adjusts once more,
the pattern begins again,
the tottering and teetering
of light and dark
of day and night
of winter facing
the return of summer in its time.

For once more the seasons rocking
to their rhythms show
that to change and shift positions,
as does the sun hour by month
is the way of living, being, thriving
in Nature’s balanced grace.

Shortest day, I treasure you,
Longest might, I honour you.
Winter Solstice, I welcome you.

Counting the Days

I no longer do Christmas, so I no longer do Advent.

This year, however, it does not mean I’m not opening little windows every night to expose what’s behind them. It is a calendar of sorts. It comes in the form of blister packs. Twenty-eight days to mark off until the Winter Solstice. Twenty-eight days until I am free of the anti-depressants I’ve been taking for the past three years and nine months.

I began the journey off of them just days after the Autumnal Equinox. It did not register at the time that it meant I’d be taking the last one on the eve of the Solstice. The timing may seem a coincidence, but I prefer to see it as a co-incidence. Not a random series of events, but one with more intention behind it. More power to assist me on the journey to be ‘drug free’.

I could undertake this step, and knew I would do, once I was granted Indefinite Leave to Remain the UK. It also came soon after the Decree Absolute from my second marriage came through. Both of these pieces of paper gave me freedom. Freedom of soul, energy, mind and body. That they arrived within weeks of each other . . . hmmmm . . . another coincidence? I think and believe not.

In any case, I am taking the journey to liberation from the tablets with deliberation and intention. I have always thanked them for enabling me to make the passage through some very difficult and challenging years and circumstances. I worked with them and they worked for me. Now that I no longer need them I am working with them be released from their hold on my body and mind. Over the course of the 45 months I was on them the dosage was gradually increased under the supervision of my GP, as my body seemed to have gotten used to the amount of drug and needed more to maintain the same level of functioning. The dose was doubled twice; and again under a different GP’s supervision over the past three months the dose has been halved gradually to the original amount of medication. There is no going off such powerful drugs cold tofu.

I realise that the journey of liberation I am making has not worked for everyone. For some it is just not possible to completely be removed from the medication and function. We are all different. Some who have had terrible withdrawal symptoms and say that if they’d known it was so hard to go off them, they’d never taken them in the first place. It depends on the person. It depends on the prescription given.

These last eleven days I approach with gratitude. I am thankful that the medication worked for me and did what I needed it to do at the time I needed the support. I am equally grateful that I am able to cease it now that I no longer need that support.