Brighter from Here: 'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's

Hello friends,

Happy Solstice! When they were younger--before I was born--my parents used to throw a solstice party. They served things that were spiny or hard on the outside and soft within (pineapple, coconut - Mom makes a delicious ambrosia) and celebrated the passing of the shortest day and longest night in the company of friends. I'd like to mark it here with you. I had hoped to have time, space, or energy to write a post that reflected more on the idea of the long night and of the distance still to travel from the dark. Maybe later. For now, I have two things to share with you.

The first is a piece of good news: my most recent scans were good enough that I am able to stay on this treatment! They weren't a miracle cure--it's more stability than anything else--but since that is better news than I have had since June I will take it. And it is a relief to know that I did not lose all my hair only to change immediately.

The second follows at the end here. It's one of my favorite poems, John Donne's "A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day." I'd like to write you either a long explanation of why I love it so much or an analysis of it as a beautiful piece of poetry (and I'm more than qualified to do both). But time is short, so instead I will share the lines that I recur to most often and have, in other winters, at other times, through my cancer treatment, and through this pandemic: "He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot/ Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not."

It has been a year of cataclysmic global and small personal losses. It seemed sometimes that loss was only thing that could be around any corner. I think of death every day, whether it is my own, those in the news, the ones I fear for my parents, or the fast-approaching one of my companion animal. Even as I write this I am staying up late because Percy, my aged and beloved cat, has chosen to sleep on me and he's ailing so quickly that any time he does this might be the last, especially since I leave tomorrow for a 2-week stay in St. Louis. For me the risk of travel was worth the reward of a Christmas with my parents, who I have not seen for six months (since they came to take care of me after my surgery). The combination of their ages (81 and 76) and my cancer means that this could easily be our last opportunity.

I've said before that a year (or however long it takes to get this health crisis under control) is longer in my life than in most people's. But it does not mean that "absence, darkness, death: things which are not" don't haunt all of us. And though tonight and in the days to come we may sit at a vigil--for Lucy, for the light--we must know that she will be back. So I welcome you to wait with me, and to watch for the light. 

Love,
Rebecca

A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day 

'Tis the year's midnight, and it is the day's,

Lucy's, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;

         The sun is spent, and now his flasks

         Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;

                The world's whole sap is sunk;

The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,

Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,

Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,

Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.

Study me then, you who shall lovers be

At the next world, that is, at the next spring;

         For I am every dead thing,

         In whom Love wrought new alchemy.

                For his art did express

A quintessence even from nothingness,

From dull privations, and lean emptiness;

He ruin'd me, and I am re-begot

Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

All others, from all things, draw all that's good,

Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;

         I, by Love's limbec, am the grave

         Of all that's nothing. Oft a flood

                Have we two wept, and so

Drown'd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow

To be two chaoses, when we did show

Care to aught else; and often absences

Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)

Of the first nothing the elixir grown;

         Were I a man, that I were one

         I needs must know; I should prefer,

                If I were any beast,

Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,

And love; all, all some properties invest;

If I an ordinary nothing were,

As shadow, a light and body must be here.

But I am none; nor will my sun renew.

You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun

         At this time to the Goat is run

         To fetch new lust, and give it you,

                Enjoy your summer all;

Since she enjoys her long night's festival,

Let me prepare towards her, and let me call

This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this

Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is.