Never Alone

Photograph by Koi Kramer

The winter holiday season has not always been a happy time in my household.

In fact, in my adulthood, it’s mostly been not happy, and with very good reason.

When I left my daughter’s father, 30 years ago, it was just after the winter holidays, and it went horribly wrong.

I had naively assumed that if I treated him with good faith and honor, he would treat me the same, and it just didn’t work out that way. I also assumed that my parents, who had never liked the man and who knew he was abusive, would be supportive of my having left.

They were not.

And so, long story short, even though I took Morganna with me when I left, I was foolish to bring her back to visit her father for a weekend, when he asked me to. When I returned for her, I was not only refused admittance to my parent’s home, and not allowed to take my daughter with me, I was served with papers suing for custody on the grounds that I had abandoned her.

And my father physically assaulted me.

Then, it all went downhill from there.

My daughter’s first Christmas was the only winter holiday I spent with her until she was 10 years old. The next Christmas I spent significantly with her was when she was 14 years old. And then, after that, she came to live with me when she was fifteen years old and we’ve spent every holiday together until this one. We still live in the same town, so we do see each other, during the pandemic, just from a distance.

All of those other Christmases, Yules and Solstices were spent cut off from my child, and most of my family, for it wasn’t only my parents who turned from me,

I was supported in my quest for safety and freedom by an aunt, an uncle and a grandmother, all of whom have since passed on.

So, you can imagine, that most of my immediate household have a very ambivalent view of this time year and are not completely comfortable in its celebration. (Even my son who wasn’t even born during this period, is somewhat unenchanted by the holiday season. There are other reasons for his trepidation, and yes, these reasons compound our difficulties with this time of year.)

But, even in those dark holidays past, in those times I was mired deep in a black well of grief and depression, there were flashes of light that were so bright that my breath would catch and I would find my soul singing with silent joy.

The first one happened when I was out wandering the wildwood.

On the greyest of Solstice days—grey as only an Ohio winter day can be, I was wandering through snow-kissed woods up above the little house outside Athens where we lived.

Once again, while I had been promised to see Morganna, because of the snow, the promise was denied,, and I had found out by telephone on the Solstice. My husband, Zak had gone on a walk with me and our Siberian Husky, Liriel, in the snow, While he gamboled about with her, I slipped into the woods ahead of them, my head spinning and heart pounding.

They were in the field just outside the wood line, and couldn’t see me. And I couldn’t see them, and could barely hear them, for a stillness had settled over the snowy woods, and I found myself barely breathing.

I was in a tiny clearing, crouched beside a stump that I had used as an altar and where I had gone to pray many times before. My heart was bleak, and empty, my throat throbbed with unshed tears. I missed my little girl so terribly. She was four years old.

I was lost—untethered, adrift. I had no family, I was outcast and unwanted and my arms wanted to hold my girl so much that it caused physical pain. I wanted to scream, but I knew it would only rip my throat raw, so I didn’t do it.

Instead, I laid my head on the stump and whispered, “I’m so alone.”

I laid there, for endless moments, my cheek against the rough, damp wood, tears silently soaking the stump, my hands gripping the mossy bark.

Without warning, there was a break in the clouds and a brilliant shaft of sunlight pierced the tangle of bare branches above me, and the silence was broken by the clear song of a cardinal.

I looked up and beheld the answer to my pain.

There, in the shaft of light, was an arching cane of black thorns hung with crimson berries, both encased in a rime of ice, like clear glass. Snow blazed pure white and flashed rainbow sparkles in the sunlight. Perched on that branch was a male cardinal, not three feet from my face. And he looked at me and burst into glorious song again, and my heart cracked open and the tears of loneliness and sorrow became waves of joy.

There, before me the darkness and light were balanced and the red was the blood that connects all living beings together. A tableau presented to me, a message in pure symbolism that illustrated the threads that bind all life together. For a moment, I was the cardinal and he was me, and I was the branch of thorns, and the berries and the snow, and the sunlight and the shadow.

Warmth filled me and in my head and heart I heard two words: “Never alone.”

And Pagan though I am, the song that bubbled up in my heart and came from my mouth was the first lines of William Byrd’s setting for the old Latin hymn, “O Magnum Mysterium.” 

Of course, it was Ohio, so the clouds skittered over the sun again, before I came to the middle of the hymn, much less the end. And the bird, of course, flew away.

But the feeling of connection and completeness , of being an integral part of the Mystery of existence in that moment stayed with me. If I close my eyes and remember that tableau of white, black and red, I feel it viscerally again, after over 25 years.

When I came stepping out of the woods to meet my husband and joyfully cavorting dog, I was smiling.

”What happened?” Zak asked, as Liriel, her blue eyes shining, leapt upon me.

”I said I was alone,” I whispered. “But the Universe answered—in a perfect moment.”

I hugged him and said, “My heart is full.”

And, it still is.

For those who are lonely this year, isolated and far from your loved ones, know this—I know how you feel. I’ve been there and go to that dark place in my heart for a little while every year around this time.

But, even when you sit in solitude, far from other people, you are not alone.

Never alone.

The Universe is there, with you.
We are there with you.
And you are loved.