Despite some of my previous writings (rantings), I’m actually a fairly happy person.
I don’t have any real financial woes to speak of, I take care of my health, my home life is stable (although the surroundings lean toward messy), and I have a strong support system of friends and family.
And yet, this time of the year sometimes makes me trend toward melancholy.
Maybe it’s the weather, the wish for better days ahead, or maybe it’s some of the awful stories that seem to hit harder during this time when we’re singing, hoping, and praying about Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward All.
This is the time of the year when lonely people may feel lonelier. And I am saddened by their pain — especially after I read about the man in North Texas, named Ronald Wayne White, who had been dead for three years before his body was discovered. The Item ran a guest editorial from the Dallas Morning News about him last week, and I ached about his plight. He had someone who cared about him — his mom had been looking for him — but since he was grown and moved around a lot, there was no missing person report. He died alone, in his apartment, and no one knew he was gone.
I’m reminded of the Beatles’ song, Eleanor Rigby, and the refrain of “all the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people, where do they all belong?”
There are a lot of lonely, invisible people out here. Some of them live and work among us, but we don’t bother to make a connection. We nod and make awkward conversation, but we don’t really know them, and they don’t really know us.
Others are the invisible people who have no place to call home. We avert our eyes when we pass them on the sidewalk, as they ask for loose change and we pretend not to hear them. We’re saddened and embarrassed by them — and we feel helpless to relieve their pain, or restore their dignity.
But these people all belonged to somebody once. They were babies, children, siblings, cousins — maybe parents — but most certainly sons and daughters before they were overtaken by trauma, mental illness and/or addiction.
Around this time of the year enough of us stop averting our eyes long enough to dig into our pockets and our hearts and lend a helping hand. And in that day between gratitude, Thanksgiving, and greed, Black Friday, we see the goodness in charitable giving.
But because there is only a month or two of us feeling good and being in a giving mood, we are inundated with requests to give more. This is the time of year for charitable giving, so all the charities stuff your mailbox with calendars, postcards, address labels, pennies, nickels, dimes, hoping you’ll return the envelope with a check. It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed when you can’t give to all the really great causes you want to — am I the only one who feels distressed and guilty?
Then there are the real tragedies that make this time of the year the worst for too many families — losing your home in a fire, losing a family member to illness, or, even more awful, a homicide.
Nothing put me into a funk faster than the horrific death of Ruth George, a 19-year-old college student in Chicago who was sexually assaulted and killed for the crime of ignoring a catcaller. This is a nightmare most women have. Understand this gentlemen: Catcalls are not compliments. They are psychological rapes. Women are not charmed or excited by your attempts to humiliate, demean and intimidate them. And ignoring you doesn’t give you license to stalk, assault, or kill. The right to move through public spaces unmolested supersedes your need to feel powerful and predatory. So stop telling women to smile. Stop harassing us. And stop killing us.
This young woman, minding her own business, just trying to make her way home safely, could have been my own daughter. She was someone else’s daughter and her family have to face this Christmas season without her. I’m sickened, disgusted, horrified — and angry.
Decent men don’t catcall.
This is hardly the Christmas column I wanted to write. Maybe in a couple of weeks, the excitement of the season will catch up and bring me back to where I look forward to seeing my extended family and remembering some really fun Christmases of my childhood.
But right now, I need to sit with the sadness that this season brings, the losses, the loneliness.
And as I pull myself up out of this depression, look around count my blessings, I’ll look to see what silver lining can encircle this cloud. Maybe it’s calling up someone I know who is lonely and offer to visit. Maybe it’s taking the time to look into the eyes of those who are invisible and let them know they are seen.
Or maybe it’s just a matter of remembering that peace on earth, goodwill toward all doesn’t have to end when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve.
