On this the darkest night

I have noticed over the years that late December seems to bring posts about loss, and this one is no exception. Since June, five women in my circle of friends and acquaintances have lost their spouses to death, two suddenly, and several people lost parents. This morning I attended the funeral of a dear former colleague's mother, a woman who, I was shocked to realize, was a year and a half younger than my late first husband, whom I cannot imagine as a man in his eighties. The greatest shock, however, was the unexpected death of a friend made more than forty years ago, when we were university students. Charles was the most gifted of our cohort, his work exhibited in a solo art show the summer after graduation, an event that proved the highlight of his life. The ensuing decades were not generally kind.

The winter solstice of course calls us to consider darkness, both as literal fact and as metaphor. We often leave for and return from work in the dark. There are fewer hours in which to accomplish the outdoor tasks that managed not to get done in the months when we wanted to do them. These short days find many of us less inclined to venture out in the evenings, the dark being so dark. We spend more time at home. Many of us turn inward, away from the outer world, at least for a while.

Similar things are happening in the non-human world. While a lot of life is still pretty lively, given the action at what I foolishly call the bird feeders, many things have gone underground: roots, seeds, larvae, hibernating animals. Humans are not the only beings who retreat from the cold and dark.

Still, even though the coldest months are ahead of us, tomorrow the days will slowly--so slowly--begin to lengthen. And today, on a hydrangea noticed on my way to a solstice observance at a site where the ancient Hopewell observed the same phenomenon, there were green buds.