Thinking of you, trailrunner.

This year was worst for all. Many people lost their loved ones due to this pandemic. May they all remain blessed and find peace!

Hiraeth, beautiful word and it’s meaning is perfection. It’s hard and sadly, so many of us are feeling it this year. Thank you Trailrunner, I’m thinking of you as well.

Oh, that is a beautiful word. a perfect word. After the death of my mother last May, I've found myself regularly thinking of my Nana and her Pops, (her parents), who were the grandparents of dreams. They have both been gone more than thirty years, and yet, now, over the last few months, I just keep getting these flashbacks and longing for the simple times we enjoyed at their house.

Still, the loss of a mother and grandparents is part and parcel of life -not the earth rattling that the loss of a child is. I've thought of you so many times Trailrunner.... always with hopes that you are getting through your days with at least a bit of peace.

Almost a feeling of nostalgia. That;s a good word trailrunner..

Take care.

Thank you for sharing this, C, and I wish you an abundance of warmth and love this season.

For the longest time, I've felt something that this well describes. It's a deep sense of longing for what once was; for people and places and eras that have come and gone and will never be again. I have often found myself on weepy edge when this season rolls around, and I know it's coming from a very "old" place in myself, ya know? There is some comfort in knowing that many of us experience and thus understand what this is like. Even in the midst of plenty and contentment, there can still remain an abiding sense of loss.

Great word that perfectly explains the feeling I get especially over holidays. I lost my mother to cancer when I was 10 years old. Well here I am 6 decades later still missing her. So many times I’ve wished for a mother. I wonder if that feeling ever goes away? Probably not or it would have by now I think.

Anyway thanks for the word! Makes me feel I can’t be the only person feeling like this.

edited for correction.

Thank you Trail, thinking of you (with a prayer).

For many years I longed for the holidays of my childhood. Now I find myself wishing for the holidays of when our children were young.

Thank you for the poem. It puts into words the thoughts I have from time to time about my immediate family, all of whom have died, my brothers far younger than ever should have been the case.

“Untranslatable deep nostalgia for a place or time that will never be again”

Or a place and time that never really was

Thank you Trail.

For the last few months, I've been "haunted" with memories of my late father and my grandparents who've gone one. It's to the point they are permeating my dreams.

I am the "keeper of the memories" and genealogist in our family. And a few months back, when all of this started, I was given several tubs of photos and papers from long ago. So many times I've had to stop working on them and walk away. Now I have a word for the overwhelming feelings that sweep over me like an ocean wave.

Hiraeth.

Untranslatable deep nostalgia for a place or time that will never be again

Or a place and time that never really was

It's so hard. :(

That word and poem really resonate. The holidays always give me a deep nostalgia for things that never were. Although I am blessed many times over, there are parts of my life that have not turned out as I hoped and dreamed they would. I always get a little sad at this time of year. Many of my ancestors were Welsh, so I will remember that word.

Thinking of you, Trail, and everyone who is feeling hiraeth.

Thank you for this word, C. A very fitting one for this year, especially. I think of you often & hope you feel the support from all of us. This is an especially poignant year for feelings of all kinds of loss, but yours of Garett, as well as others here who have lost dear ones, it is doubly so. Again thank you...

A wonderful word, c, to describe emotions that are hard to describe. I especially am thinking of you and your loss of Garett. And I ran into an old friend yesterday who lost her husband a few months ago to cancer, and she is feeling all sorts of emotion with the holidays approaching.

Thank you for sharing such a beautiful sentiment. My heart goes out to you and our other friends here dealing with such heartache and pain. 😔

I lost my DH during the holidays and it certainly changes them forever. I do feel him near, as well ... I always do when he knows we especially need him. But, yes, the longing. It’s very real. And the memories both hurt and feel good.

Thank you for sharing this with us. ❤️

Oh, tears on my eyes. I loved that, This is one I have saved and often do just as it bids. It’s important to me,

"Grieve not,
nor speak of me with tears
but laugh and talk of me
as if I were beside you...
I loved you so...
'twas Heaven here with you"

Thank you trailrunner...who knew there was such a perfect word.

I thought of you when I was watching the final Maria Sirois this week.

Sending you thoughts of comfort as you face into this most difficult time.

Thank you for sharing that. It was truly beautiful.

Beautiful and so touching. I am thinking of you and your family. The holidays can be so difficult. I am the last one left in my family. Holidays are a real test to my mental health.

Thank you for sharing this!

You have said it perfectly, C.. a longing for a time in which one truly felt at home in one’s own life. I can relate....sometimes I don’t feel like I recognize my own life. It’s not bad, just changed into something I hadn’t seen coming. I am trying not to keep looking back wondering where it is.

God bless you this Christmas and bless your son Gareth and all your family. ❤️

I don't think we necessarily gloss over bad times when we get nostalgic. As I age, I have come to realize it's not just a rose-colored-glasses look back, some times actually WERE better than others. World War Two and the Depression were HORRIBLE events but we overcame them and there was a sense of joy that came from that time and era afterwards. It was the best time in history for the middle class. I know that not every person on the planet experienced the good times, but my family was able to escape ethnic cleansing and death by fascism and come to the US and better their lives. Not leave all the troubles behind, but it was tangibly better than hiding out from bands of marauding Cossacks all the time. I grew up with not only a sense of good fortune, but a commitment to problem solving so that fewer people would have to go through the hard times my family experienced. The generation that beat back fascism at a young age was game for taking on all kinds of problems with confidence of victory. We live in a totally different era now. So many of the middle class experiences and institutions I grew up with are fading away. And also the people who brought them to us. And what has taken its place is tangibly not the same. I try to keep up the traditions, but I am more and more in the minority. I still participate in many of the family and cultural and social/economic events of my youth, watching participation dwindle. And I'm not opposed to new kinds of traditions, but even those are a tough sell. And I'm not such a young thing myself anymore, with bounding energy.

A great homage to nostalgia is the movie, "Avalon" where the narrator replays his working class upbringing in a close knit family and the gradual betterment of their lives financially but loosening of emotional ties. There is a sad scene in the end when he takes his son to see his great grandfather in a nursing home, so that the son can get to know him the way he did, and hear the old family stories that he loved so much growing up, and when the grandfather starts to tell the old tale of how he met the grandmother, his story can't compete with the parade that is on the TV which has all the great grandchild's attention. And this was before the even more in-your-face influence of the cell phone/mini computer screen.

I do what I can, and take my pleasures where I can. Joy is intimately related to connection, IMHO. Our church pastor preached on this very topic last Sunday. It's not surprising that joy is hard to come by in these socially distant days . . . but we have to keep trying. As far as the pastor's message, the joy of connecting to God is always available no matter what the circumstances. Although easier said than achieved, IMHO. Our pastor wasn't just blabbing either, he lost his first wife and two daughters in one fell swoop out of the blue one day, due to a car accident. He was at a meeting for work . . . they were out shopping. Not unlike what happened to Joe Biden. Our pastor said joy comes often right next to loss, in his experience. Not necessarily in mine. In my experience, joy comes from participating in ongoing connections. Sunrise, sunset.