Christmas Lights. 

The tree glows with Mom and the clink-clink of her bracelets against the wheels of her legs and sometimes her mind. She loved Christmas. The lights hit the world and there is nothing the world could offer that will ever be as bright as lights on a December tree of the past: stuffing candy into stockings, gluing extra-large bows onto presents, melting gooey marshmallows in steaming liquid chocolate, and their eyes, their eyes like sparklers catching the flame until nothing else matters.

She never saw my writing: never read a word, deciphered a phrase, touched the white paper of a poem with her good hand, heard a line of the Hopkins Thesis or argument about love in my St. John’s Precept; never discussed philosophy or helped me write a paper for class; never saw my website or commented on my ideology; never confirmed the laughter or disappointment in the aspiring truth of my fiction. And yet — and yet — she is the reason for all of it. She is my Sophia, my elusive call of Wisdom, beckoning me as I write each —and every — word.

The single comfort in tragic fiction is knowing the protagonist, having lost that which is most sacred and therefore everything, is more resilient and often wiser because of their loss. But there is no name to give this villain. There is no wrong to right. There is no arcing journey and no flickering revelation at the end — just those Christmas lights. The same old lights, lit just as bright, reflecting the same truth they always did, and another generation sits in silence staring into them — searching for the same thing she was looking for, the same thing I have found.