Solstice: A Long Winter

My breath drifts like smoke into the bitter air scraping at my skin. Snow and ice line the landscape, rounding off the right-angle lines of the city. A season in gray, a world in slumber. The only warmth exists behind panes of glass, in incandescent light, huddled under blankets. The outside world is cold and harsh and endless.

This winter has pulled at my soul in a thousand invisible ways, plucking at the seams and yanking, stretching, twisting. If it is a season of death, I am one of many fighting it with rock salt and marching through puddles of runoff in the dark hours of the days. I am going through the motions, and I see the world in shadows and reflections—as echoes of existence. Sheets of ice canvas the sidewalks, and mini mountains of snow are piled in the corners of everywhere. I hear my name around corners, from no one. I blink hard against the bright-white glare; the world spins around me on repeat.

My grandmother is dead. I’m now without the oldest person with my name. She was the mother of all things I know, the longest, closest link back to my genesis. My dad, his siblings, my brother, my cousins, we all lead back to her. Without her, what are we but whispers?

Thanksgiving.

But she was, and she brought us into being. So we are not whispers: we are screams into the cold morning. We are alive to breathe this cold air stinging our lungs. Though we are tired and we are trudging forward with one less of our kin, with every step, we forge ahead into every new day. We are tied together, by history and blood and memory.

We can honor lost life by living ours. We can become our future selves, better than before, telling stories of times long gone. We can drink and eat till we are full, and we can laugh at our dogs, ourselves, and our flaws without shame. We can surround ourselves with people who will remember us at our best, and forgive us at our worst.

The sun rises low in the sky now, but one day, not long from now, it will shine high above me and warm every molecule of my being. One day this winter will be a memory, and it will mean loss, but also rebirth.

I will look back and know that "I" became "we." Years from now we’ll watch the sunrise together. We’ll watch it set fire to the eastern sky, and we’ll live a perfect day before it disappears over the western horizon. Then we'll drink two cocktails before we order our meals—because that is how it is done. We will eat, we will laugh, we will tell stories of our youth and the things we remember most. And when we are done, we will sleep together through the darkest hours of night, knowing that life starts in the past and forges ever onward into the future.