Solstice at Last

I'm taking heart that the daylight will start lingering a bit longer each day, even if it's only by minutes. In some ways I am savoring the darkness too, just because it encourages me to take things slowly. But the sun on my face, bright red behind my eyelids, feels the most comforting.

I sent candles to each of my family members. Inside their cards I wrote: "This Christmas, we would have been looking forward to Elise's 1st birthday. As my gift to her and to you, I am sending this candle. Please light it in her honor on Dec.26th and 27th, and whenever you think of her."

I also included this passage from Daphne Du Maurier, quoted from Healing After Loss. It captures best my feelings of our lost future with her, the hope she seems to bring us despite her death, and my belief that her life, however brief and forgotten by many, will always resonate with me, Dan, Felix, and therefore in those who truly love us:

"To have lived at all is a measure of immortality; for a baby to be born, to become a man, a woman, to beget others like himself, is an act of faith in itself, even an act of defiance. It is as though every human being born into this world burns, for a brief moment, like a star, and because of its pinpoint of light shines in the darkness, and so there is glory, so there is life."