Let’s go… Slaho!

My Christmas tree is dead. We’re still 4 days from Christmas and the poor thing is just drooping and dry. It’s my fault really. I bought it at Publix where they don’t saw off the bottom for you, then was too lazy to pull out my hand saw and take a bit off the bottom. I watered it plenty, but the poor thing just wouldn’t drink. So it died. And it’s just sitting there, leaving needles on my floor, but leaving a nice scent in the meantime.

Well, it’s only four more days, right? Then I can just dump the tree. What’s four days anyways? Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it. Here’s the other. My tree is not an ADVENT tree. It is a CHRISTMAS tree. In other words I should have it up for Christmas. ALL of Christmas. Not just Christmas day. But the entire Christmas season. That, of course, traditionally ends on the feast of the Epiphany (what my Hispanic lineage refers to as “La Fiesta de los Reyes Magos”, or “Three Kings Day”). One of the things that I’ve noticed has been lost during this whole secularization and commercialization of Christmas is that people have not just forgotten the meaning of Christmas… they don’t even know when Christmas is. Everybody still seems to know that Hanukkah is nine days long. But nobody seems to know that Christmas is 12 days long. HELLO! That song is not about gifts!! There really are 12 days of Christmas. No, you’re not expected to give or receive gifts for 12 days (though it’d be nice), but we should be celebrating throughout that time.
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OK so technically this is not going to be a poem. And Ide is short for Idelio (pronounced, ee-deh, not “eyed”), but it looked nice that way and when I think of an ode I think of something giving an uplifting description (just in poetic form). So, an ode this is…

Today was a rough day for me as I was there to bid a final goodbye to an old friend. It was sad in a way because I’ll never be able to see or speak to him face to face again. On the other hand, I couldn’t help myself from smiling for the man had done something that he professed he would do better than anybody I’d known until now: he cheated death for 37 years. If the Grim Reaper had had his way with Idelio he would have taken him long before I ever would have had a chance to meet him. He was supposed to be gone by the age of 7. And after he turned 8, there was no reason to believe at any point in life that he should go on any longer. And yet he did… day after day after day, after month, after year, after decade. He wasn’t being fooled either. He and I talked freely about his mortality numerous times over the last 20 years, he constantly reminding me that every meeting may be our last, but that he was going to make sure that somehow it wouldn’t be. Well, the day finally came, and though many expressed shock at it’s suddenness, I couldn’t help but think otherwise, and could only smile at the fact that we were all fortunate to have him as long as we did.

I must admit that when I first met the man, I didn’t know what to make of him. He was the first person that I can honestly say I regularly interacted with who had a visible physical disability. You’d never know it by talking to him, though. He never let you look at him or treat him with any sort of pity. He was what he was and that’s the way he was supposed to be, so deal with it. It was a great attitude to have and an incredibly refreshing one that made it easy for me to interact with him. It took my focus off of his right hand which was misshapen and which he could not control, and from his very obvious limp. Growing up I had an issue that whenever I would see someone with a disability I couldn’t help but stare. Idelio quickly taught me to stop doing that; all the while he never actually said, “don’t stare at my hand.” It just became natural to not look at it, and to see the man behind it.
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