How I Feel This Holiday Season

I am in a profound state of grief. I find no comfort in Christmas sentiments. As one soldier fighting in Vietnam in December said in a moment of rage and despair, “Merry fucking Christmas.” Don’t give me your greetings of Merry Christmas.

I am grieving for Rachel because she and her future children are no more. I am crying for Cordelia, who told King Lear her wonderfully honest feelings of parental love and lost everything for it. I am crying with Margaret, who is grieving over Goldengrove unleaving and for the things of man and herself. I am Gerard Manley Hopkins who said “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief.”

I am the surviving but devastated lover in W. H. Auden’s “Stop All the Clocks.” I am Dylan Thomas telling his father to rage, rage against the dying of the light. I don’t want to send out cheery Christmas cards — I want to send out copies of Elie Wiesel’s Night.

What happened on election day is a catastrophic loss for our country, our democracy and our beloved Earth. I am in a profound state of grief and I cannot be comforted. The heavens are weeping and flooding the earth with deadly tears. I only find a small sad comfort in the deep sadness of others.