December 1, 2025
Monday

As for the nights I warn you the nights are dangerous:
The wind changes at night and the dreams come.
— Archibald MacLeish, 1892-1982, American poet
from “Epistle to Be Left in the Earth”

Hello again, Holidailies, and any other readers I might have left. I last used this platform exactly one year ago, on the first day of Holidailies 2024. And then I fell silent, here, there, everywhere. I stopped writing, I stopped reading, I stopped doing just about anything except caring for my husband, Ron, who began a slow (at first) decline that culminated in his death on August 19, 2025, one month after he turned 88 and twelve days after he entered Hospice on our forty-second wedding anniversary. He died of a recurrence of the lung cancer first diagnosed in 2015, treated with chemotherapy and radiation, and declared in total remission at the beginning of 2025.

Lurking silently, however, was “a neoplasm of uncertain behavior,” discovered by an emergency room physician who treated Ron in late June for a sudden attack of dyspnea, an inability to breathe normally. A simple steroid treatment halted the attack, and he could have been discharged. But the wise ER doc was persistent, ordered an MRI, and there was the spot, its nature uncertain. A few weeks later his oncologist ordered a battery of tests designed to determine how to proceed to eradicate this neoplasm she was sure was malignant. On the morning of the first of those tests Ron woke me and declared he was refusing the tests and any new chemo/radiation plan. He was gone before the last of those discovery tests would have been performed.

That was more words than I planned to devote to bringing the Holidailies community up to date at the start of this festive season. I am doing well, considering. I have a lot of support from friends and professionals alike. Thanksgiving was warm and full of love, despite the empty chair, making just five of us — me, my daughter, Lynn, her husband, Matt, and the two splendid grandchildren, Joey (9 now) and Jonny (7), who miss their Daideo but are not quite certain what it is that is inside the lovely small urn shaped like a bird that took a place on the table. The next day was equally a balm to my spirit, spent with friends and their own 9-year-old on their way from New York City to their own family gathering in central Pennsylvania.

So now what? Where do I go from here? I welcome Holidailies on this first weekday of Advent, this season of hope and longing and reconciliation and forward motion. As I write this it is nearly 9:00 in the evening in central Pennsylvania. We’re expecting a significant accumulation of snow beginning before dawn tomorrow. I chose the lines from Archibald MacLeish not necessarily because this night is dangerous, but because the dreams will come. The wind will change tonight and I will lie down to dream about where life will lead me next.

I’m only 78. I have a lot of living to do. Come along with me, won’t you?