Two years ago, Jimmy refused to come to our Christmas eve affair at
Frank and Dawns. Perhaps he knew Frank would die before the next year was out
and didn’t want to witness the sad character Frank had become, choosing to
remember him from the more vibrant past.
Rocky, Frank and I made a caravan from Haledon to Sparta and then
privately fumed about Jimmy’s not coming. I suppose I needed to share this last
moment which Jimmy denied me – a bit of selfishness I suppose that I eventually
felt less guilty about.
But this year, Jimmy’s arrival
seemed mysterious, and he seemed locked into his moody plots, a regular conspiracy
theorists, whose speculations boarder on the bizarre (he telling us the world
has been invaded by aliens and that the government is using the popular movies
to tell us about it.) We spent hours listening to his diatribe, which on any
other day, I would have enjoyed, but somehow ruined the day. I had come to the
holiday to relive the past, to celebrate our survival as friends, to plan for
closer connections in the future. I did not want to hear talk of a possible
1997 invasion from Mars, or even some global catastrophe such as the rising
seas or melting ice caps.
Sometimes I just want Christmas to be Christmas.
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