Christmas Sadness

[Phoebe]

My neighbor is experiencing this badly right now but I am not the right person to help. My whole extended family on one side lost a young person to a tragic end right about this time of year, a few years ago, and two of my grandparents many years ago, so they're all kind of glum and blue right now. On the other side of the family, two of my young relatives are now addicted to heroin where before we thought it was just one and that he was clean for a few years. I feel this gripping terror in my gut that it is a death sentence, and when I hear my kids' friends talk about marijuana use in the same way these kids used to talk, I feel a kind of vertiginous nausea wondering which ones might die. So really everyone is just blue and miserable and not feeling like "enforced cheer" is appropriate. I went to a different church yesterday for an event and the minister said they are having a solstice ceremony, very quiet, very peaceful for those who are suffering at this time of year, because of all the "enforced merriment". I thought that was just wonderful, how he put that. Not that the rest of the people should stop being merry, but just that there is some degree of enforced merriment in December and people need respite from it occasionally. Hopefully that is not true for any of you, but if it is, I understand. There is a melancholy at this time.