"A blog is to a writer what a canvas is to an artist." ~ Colleen Redman

Winter Solstice

From a scoop of luscious moon… at the Milky Way counter…the stars have spilled over…in an icy cold night.

My brothers, Jim and Dan, died a month apart in the summer of 2001. The first Christmas after their deaths, I was still mourning and deeply involved in writing what would become my first book, “The Jim and Dan Stories.” The book, a chronicle of the first 6 months of the grieving process, weaves together stories of growing up as one of nine siblings with the stories of my brothers’ last weeks. Below is an excerpt from the book, written on the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year. It was my hope at the time that my burden of grief would grow lighter as the light returned and days grew longer, and the excerpt marked a turning point in that direction.

It’s one mile to our neighbor’s farm where the Winter Solstice Celebration is held. There’s a spiral labyrinth there made of evergreen boughs that we walk with a lighted candle each year. Bundled up to protect us from the cold, one by one each person arrives at the center where they say a few prayerful words before walking back the same way they came, leaving their candle somewhere along the spiraled path. What starts out in the dark, ends up brightly lit, a hopeful reminder of the days growing longer, of the in and out breath of the year.

I stayed home this Winter Solstice. I was still reluctant to be with large groups of people. My husband, Joe went, and when he came home, I told him, excitedly, “Something new has happened.”

“What?” he asked.

“I’ve written a four line poem that’s not about Jim or Dan.”

“What’s it about?” Joe asked. “Is the fact that it’s four lines significant?” He added.

“No, that’s only significant in that it’s a small step. The significance is that I wrote a poem for the first time in months, and it’s not about Jim or Dan. It’s light and just for fun,” I said, encouraged.

While Joe was walking the Solstice spiral, a stray cat was crying at our front door. I knew that my son’s dog, Jasmine, would be home soon and would chase it away or something worse. I thought about a Bible story I remembered from my childhood. Jesus said it, I think. ‘If you turn away the beggar at your door, you also turn away me.’ Then I thought about Danny’s cat, Winslow. What would Danny do with a crying cat on a cold night? I brought the cat, which was white and butterscotch colored, a bowl of ground venison and a drink of water. After devouring the food, the cat continued to cry, until Jasmine did come home and chased it away. Nature taking its course, I thought.

Still, I peered through my window looking for that cat and that’s when the moon’s delightful richness struck me…From a scoop of luscious moon, at the Milky Way counter, the stars have spilled over, in an icy cold night, I wrote. The poem got me thinking about Lime Rickey’s and Frappes and the L Street soda fountain we grew up with. But I’m not going to write about that.

~ From Nature Taking its Course

December 21st, 2005 Colleen Redman Posted in Losing a Loved One

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