We buried Jane’s body a year ago today. People tell me there were lots of people at the funeral. Whether there were or not I cannot honestly say. My eyes were on the casket and the sudden absence of the person who was half my soul. There was a faint joy in knowing she no longer hurt–that she had gone home. And the numbness of the sudden shock of it held the grief that has since blossomed at bay.

I helped carry her casket into the church. I helped carry it out again. I helped carry it to the grave. It is not a husband’s traditional place in the order of a funeral. But as I had carried her across the threshold on our wedding day, I was determined to carry her figuratively into the new life we both knew was there.

In a little while I will make the solitary drive up the hill to the cemetery. I will finish decorating the grave for Christmas and leave a Christmas card for her. I will come home.

Others will do the same today for those they have lost. They will enter the holidays for the first or second or third or fourth or..nth time… They will face the empty chair, the empty place at the table, the empty space in the bed next to them.

I took my niece to see A Christmas Carol yesterday in Providence. The play is always powerful and poignant for me–and yesterday it was particularly so. For me,Christmas/Solstice/Sun Return/Hanukkah/Kwanza/Whatever other holiday you may celebrate at the turn of

the year, is about the return of light out of darkness and hope out of despair. There is no more hopeless case than Scrooge–and his redemption is a reminder that no matter how dark things seem, no matter how hopeless, the power is in each of us to change the world–or at least some small piece of it. And if everyone worked–to cure one disease, to feed one child, to house one homeless person–the world would truly be changed.

Jane and I fought the battle to educate children–to help them learn to think and feel at the same time–to know that they could make a difference in their lives and in the life of the world.

Now, for a time, my work is the cancer that took my wife, that takes thousands of people’s lives every year. It is sometimes painful work I wish had fallen on someone else. But teaching had its painful moments as well.

In this season it is easy to get caught up in the miracles of the Festival of Light, of the birth of a specific child, of the turning back of darkness. What gets too often lost in the shuffle are the small daily miracles created out of grief and love and momentary compassion. Every person has it in them to be or to create the miracle that saves or betters the life of another.

So don’t just celebrate miracles this time of year–be one.