Christmas Eve is a jazz day for me, the day that I dig out my Cassandra Wilson and Diana Krall and soak myself in the quieter side of life. Christmas Day is for family and yelling and presents and food and laughter; Christmas Eve belongs to me.

We mark this day as special; unlike our random June twenty-eighths, for instance, we can usually think back and remember exactly what we did on this day in years past. We mark the passage of our years by the changes in our lives on our holidays, the presence or absence of those we care about. Our specific memories of this day on years past serve to bring a loved one's absence into sharper, more painful relief.

In the end, most of us still have it right: when we think of this holiday we think not of the gifts, but the people we shared those gifts with. Lose someone you care about, and you will think about them during the holiday season for the rest of your life.

The weight of memory can be difficult to bear, so difficult that sometimes we lose track of how precious the people still in our lives are to us. Those of us who mourn for what was once, without celebrating the now, tend to forget that as of next year, this day falls into the category of "what was."

On this holiday, celebrate what is. By all means, remember those you have lost, but celebrate those who are still in your life.

Tonight, I may or may not have the mug of hot chocolate, since I won't be at home, but you'll be in my thoughts.

How simple, how easy, it would be. Like falling, and letting gravity do the work. A town named for my family, a road named for my great-grandfather, a community center named after my grandfather, and several generations of children (and adults) who had my mother for a teacher…Here, by dint of birth and breeding, I would never—could never—be a stranger. Part of the community whether I asked for it or not, unlike our days in Huntsville where we freely admit to recruiting geeks into our ragamuffin alternate family.

- "road unshared" - July 19, 2003

I'd raced to my cell phone yesterday afternoon, and was delighted to see that it was Jeff calling. Our custom is to call each other when we reach the endpoint of a trip. Just a routine call, I thought, but not the routine message I expected: "Your sister called."

My mind nearly shut off right then. My sister and I are not close; a phone call from her implies death or destruction. She doesn't make social calls. Not to me, anyway.

"Do the names Wanda and Ron mean anything to you?"

"Yeah. They live just down the road from Mom, and they've been good friends with us for years. Their daughter's a couple of years older than me. We played together a lot when we were kids."

"Wanda's father shot himself this morning."

I felt my voice rising, that awful horrid squeak of untenable news creeping into my voice. "He what?"

"He shot himself this…"

…and I thought, No, no, it's not that I didn't hear you, it's that I don't understand.

* * * * *

"It was needless—but then again, is there such a thing as a needful suicide?"

- "memoriam.", January 13, 2001

We've been through this before, you see.

When I called my mother back, the sadness in her voice was all too familiar. It's the same depth of sadness and lack of comprehension that creeps into her voice when she speaks of the brother she lost.

"Wanda and Ron were so good to us. They've been there for everything…when Keith died, when your grandfather died, when your father died…they were always there for us."

My memory matches hers. Wanda and Ron were the type of family that springs up unbidden around you in a small community like Tull: even though they were one of the few families in Tull we weren't directly related to, by dint of years of life together, they just counted. Weddings, funerals, births of children and grandchildren: for all of these and a thousand occasions more mundane, they were part of our family in the ways that count.

My heart aches for them. Noah was ninety-three, and a widower; the only explanation we have is that he was beginning to slow down, and was afraid that he would have to move into a nursing home.

Early Sunday morning, he made his choice. Wanda and Ron found him a few hours later.

* * * * *

My grandmother is devastated. Noah was one of the few of 'her' generation remaining. She has buried her parents, her husband, several siblings, a son, and a son-in-law–and yet, she still stands, mid-eighties, with every death leaving yet another appreciable hole in her life that grandchildren and great-grandchildren seem unable to fill.

I sat out on Brian & Suzan's back porch last night, listening to the storm roll in, wondering if we're ever meant to understand events such as these. What really drives a person to suicide? Is it possible that there are some situations that are simply unbearable by the human psyche? Is there a point in which death becomes the preferable course? Does our intent not to hurt those we love ever become eclipsed by the need to make our own pain stop?

Is there ever a time in which such a final and selfish act is actually an acceptable course of action? If so, how do we move past grief and anger to acceptance?

I hope Noah Smith found the peace he sought.

I hope that–someday–Wanda and Ron will find theirs.

A few nights ago I had a dream about Rustina. Rustina Wear, gone these fifteen years, gone one year less than she lived—the girl who was my sister's childhood best friend. I would make expected and pithy statements about how her untimely death in a freak car accident was one that affected us deeply.

Except that I can't say any such things. I only know of her death through her absence. Does that make sense? I don't remember much about her except to remember the hole that was in her place after she was gone.What I dreamed about was the poem written on the back of her headstone. When my sister and her classmates cleaned out Rustina's locker at school, they found bits and pieces of poetry scribbled on pieces of paper jammed into her locker. Some consolation, then, that they found something emotionally fitting that was short enough to be inscribed on her headstone.

I have a picture of the stone in my memory book. It was the last picture on a roll of film, and thus the colors were damaged. I haven't read the inscription in years; I don't have to. I can't recite the entire piece from memory, but I do remember a two-line couplet that has stayed with me since the moment I finally, truly, awfully comprehended it:

"There is always the time
For washing the dishes
But never enough time
For wishing your wishes."

- then, in my dream, I walk away.

Sometimes I wish my sister had talked about her. I always had the sense that I missed something; Rustina's name was rarely mentioned. She was "she," a pronoun with no antecedent. No antecedent necessary. But every time my sister would mention her friends—we teased her about how she would say the ungrammatical phrase "Me an' Sherry an' Adriel" so fast it sounded like one word—yet we could always hear the fourth name that wasn't added in anymore.

When I awoke from the dream, I was most stunned by a realization of age. At the time of her death, I was nine. Since that time, my perception of age difference has not changed, even though my actual age has. Even now, I picture her as being nine years older than my current age. The part that kept me awake was realizing that I am almost nine years older than she will ever be.

I found this strangely hard to accept.