The holidays are a time of joy and delight at the sounds and sights of merriment and glee. It is a time marked by church bells ringing, choirs singing and children dreaming of snowflakes and flying reindeers with funny names.
The holiday season is a celebration of life. It is the embodiment of dreams, of aspirations and inspirations that define the human need to seek, sense and feel the connection of one to the other, and of our humanness in the natural world around and beyond us. It is a time of wonderment and bewilderment.
And for too many, this is also the season that brings back memories of moments lived and shared, of voices silenced and of dreams deferred to the shadows of time. It is a time when mourning becomes night, and night becomes the unbearable weight of unbalanced sorrow and anguished grief. Unyielding memories of emotions, sensations and reactions that keep alive faces and places that have faded into the very being of us, becoming a part of us, living within us.
It is the season of reflections of the mosaic of time, captured in pieces and fragments of shattered dreams that once helped illuminate each passing season and helped explain and define the whole of us, the best of us, and the wonder of us. Holiday memories of seasons past, of Christmases shared and of commingled emotions and sentiments bind and forever link what was to the season that is, to the heart that still beats and to the child within who still believes in the magic and the wondrous chronicle of the birth in a manger of a prince with the keys to a kingdom beyond time and beyond dreams.
And it is when mourning becomes night that our minds seek out the reflections of shining moments lived and shared that help illuminate the morning light that reawakens the child within, and the dreams that never die. And we become aware that dreams are but shadows of time. And we, but reapers and harvesters of the remnants of time, left scattered on fields of blossoming visions and illusions of what was, what is, or what could have been. Our tears nurture the human emotion that fuels the passion of each season, and the reason for church bells ringing, choirs singing and vibrant, glowing memories of comfort and joy.
Mourning becomes night, and morning light brings the reflections of time without end, and of eternal dreams that blossom with the seasons and with the tears that remember the silenced voices, and emotions once kindled and incited that are still felt and sensed.
The holidays are a time of joy and delight, even though memories may bring back shadows of our past and dreams that never came to be. This is the season to hear church bells ringing, choirs singing and the silenced voices that still echo through the corridors of time and of broken hearts.
Mourning becomes night. But the golden rays of morning light bring grace, faith and trust in the reasons for this season, and the miracle of a star, a child, and a promise.
Al Garcia lives in San Juan.
