A Table For One For Christmas.

2021 marks my third Christmas as a table for one. I should be despondent, but I am of good cheer. A long time ago, I learned life is a series of emotional peaks and valleys. There are moments of connection with others and moments when we are emotionally or spiritually estranged from those around us. That’s the wonder about being alive, no moment is perfect until it is captured and transformed in our memories into something mythical. Being human is to live in longing for that perfect affinity with those we love. Happiness has its own timetable and can appear in times of peace, war and even plague when the circumstances are right. There is no mandatory rule that statutory holidays will be a happy occasion for you.

I know from personal experiences that many of my Christmas' in the past were happy while others were a complete shit show where family dramas, petty grievances drink and close quarters with family members made the yuletide feel like a script reading from an episode of Succession. In my boyhood, our family’s Christmas Eve and Christmas day were spent in the company of my parent's friends. They were a collection of comrades who had come from various parts of Europe to our shores after the Second World War. They were mostly refugees from tyranny trying to build a new life, forget their past and get on with the business of living. During those Christmas' with them, there was much laughter, drink and song. But, I always detected some melancholy and regret behind the holiday facades of my parent's friends. They just couldn’t help but remember their homelands, their dead and those that they had left behind while they supped on a table of plenty my parents had prepared for us all.

Over time Christmas and how it was spent changed for me. First, my brother Peter became seriously ill from schizophrenia during one Christmas season and that shook my mum and dad's faith that their children would be spared the heartache of serious illness until later in life.

Then after many years of ill health, my mum died followed by my brother a few years later. So, it was left for my dad and me to keep the holiday spirit continuing to honour those who could no longer partake in the simple pleasures of living.

I found my Christmas’ with my dad during the last years of his life so joyous we had to catch our breath from the happiness in the room. I suppose we both knew his time left to live was as brief as the moments between sunrise and sunset in the depth of winter.

When my dad died in November 2018, I was gutted over that Christmas season and spent Christmas day delivering food parcels for those who were less fortunate than me. I wanted to be out of the house and bury my grief in work. Still, there was a deadness in my heart, and I felt sad and separated from other living beings. I remember that after I had finished my Tukey dinner deliveries, I went home to an empty apartment and drank a glass of wine. I felt purposeless and unconnected to life because my dad's death was still very fresh in my heart. I even wrote a letter to myself permitting me to end my life in a year should my despair continue. The year past and Christmas arrived again, and this time I was spending it alone because I had just been diagnosed with rectal cancer and could not bear being in the company of others. Alone eating my turkey, I remembered my promise. I could end my existence if I felt unhappy enough. I was more depressed than the previous year. But my cancer diagnosis gave me a better perspective on my mortality. It made me understand; I'm in this life until my last breath.

But others may not be because tipping points are different for all of us. That is why we must reach out to those we know and thank them for allowing us to be part of their journey and them for being part of our journey. Connecting with someone creates a bond of hope that is as nourishing for the soul as soup is for the stomach.

Humans will always know loneliness because they know they are mortal. However, most loneliness is not existential but caused by right-wing politics that puts the needs of the 1% over our own. Poverty, physical illness, mental illness, racism, sexism, and living in conditions of war or violence create so much angst in its sufferers. Never forget this holiday season and into 2022 that to end loneliness, we must end the politics of entitlement. So, if it is your thing, Happy Christmas and if it isn’t Happy Holidays.

Go Well, everyone, you have shown me much comradeship during my journey. John