I’m at the age now where I have more dead friends and family than I do ones who are still alive. Over the decades I have watched just about everyone I have ever known and cared about die from illnesses (especially during the 1980s), accidents, drug overdoses, suicides and I even had a couple of friends who were brutally murdered. These were some of the most incredible people who molded me in my youth and who I also had some outrageously good times with.
When Christmastime rolls around each year, I start reminiscing about all the lovely people who now live only in my memory. Missing them is the hardest though I try to focus on the good times but, as usual, it ends up with moments of melancholy. It’s hard to think about good times with friends without thinking of their sad end as well. There’s always that emotional “booby trap” I ultimately fall into.
Crowded Christmas parties I used to go to where I knew everyone in the place are now only survived by myself and maybe a couple of others.
Oh the naïve days of youth where one lives as if everyone around us will be together forever. Little does one so young realize just how short that “forever” actually is.
The Christmas season is supposed to be a time of joy and togetherness but unfortunately some, and I’m one of them, see the Holidays as a time of sadness and longing for family and friends now long gone. I’ve even grown to regret seeing the months creeping closer to December.
When you only have two surviving family members, Christmas kinda sucks. Actually Christmas for me has turned into a time of mourning and not one of happiness.
I try to make Christmas happy for my mother. It’s just us for the holidays now. I do try to bury my sadness by setting up my tree and preparing a good meal. We’re not that big on Christmas presents any longer though I do give gifts to my mother and my only brother who spends Christmas with his girlfriend of 40+ years. I only have three close friends now so I give them a little something too.
I often wonder what Christmas will be like when my mother passes away and I’m then truly alone during the Holidays. I wonder if I will no longer set up a tree and just go into hiding for a month until it passes. I won’t spend Christmas with my brother and his girlfriend because her mother is a hateful bitch and, from what I understand, her siblings are a bunch of petty snobs. So I refuse to put up with their bullshit at Christmas or any other time for that matter.
Since COVID and because of my medical conditions, I have remained isolated. Actually I have been isolated since 2016 when I got so fed up with the bullshit from Roanoke, Virginia’s LGBT community and left for good. I talked about my beefs with Roanoke’s LGBT community in an earlier post.
I don’t mind being isolated but now, since nearly all my friends and family are gone, the world is nothing but a bunch of strangers who I avoid in order to not die from some illness I can’t fight off.
I had a friend, who had the same medical condition I do and who also had all their immunizations, caught COVID in October 2022 and died within two weeks. So clubs, bars and any public gathering is still off limits to me for my own safety and probably will be for the rest of my life. I can’t drink anymore anyway so why would I go to a bar? For the entertainment? I don’t think so. I have all the entertainment in the world at home.