[Editor: This post has been backdated to the time and date that it was written originally as opposed to time it is being transcribed. The same goes for the mention of my location.]
A lot of places I expected to be open today are closed. But then again, there are places that are open today that I was sure would be closed. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. I passed two CVS pharmacies today, one was open, the other wasn't.
How are those of us who don't celebrate Easter supposed to figure it out?
A Little Background
I grew up in a Protestant family and we celebrated Easter and all the other holidays. However, I tended to take after my father who was not a religious man, although he was very spiritual. I was too young to realize this at the time, but it is very obvious when I look back at it.
Anyway, as I went through my later teen years things always seemed to come up around Easter. One year I had the flu, another I sprained my ankle, another I came close to breaking my knee.
This culminated the year I was 21. That year my father died Easter weekend. To be a bit more specific, he would not wake up Thursday morning (one day before Good Friday) and was declared dead that night.
We mourned through the weekend and had the memorial service first thing after the holiday, on Tuesday.
Since then I have only been to (if I remember correctly) two Easter dinners. I usually worked if I had a job which needed someone those days, and spent it alone otherwise. Like today...
I am at Chili's in an almost empty bar. Then I will either head into the woods for a while or find some other quiet place.
Anyone feel like sharing their own Easter memories, good or bad, in the comments?
The first Easter I spent really alone was the one just after I moved to Boston. It was in the first two months I was living there, because I was still staying in my aunt's basement. Their family is Jewish, and I recall there was high tension in the household at that moment anyway. I just wanted to get out of the house.
ReplyDeleteI only knew a couple of people in Boston at that point. Bulldog was one of them. I called him to see if he was into hanging out, totally forgetting that most people have family stuff on Easter. You and he were going to Easter dinner at the house of one of his relatives, I don't recall who.
There is no alone that's quite so alone as being alone on a holiday. That's when I realized that holidays, in my personal cosmology, don't have any connotation of holy-days. Mind you, I have those, too. But holidays are about being with family and friends. They're about being surrounded by the warmth that only comes from other people.
I spent Easter with my parents this year, and then went to see a wonderful show. It seems to have taken me two days to crash quite this hard. But that's a thought for my journal, not yours.