december 15
running errands in the car, carols playing

dear pat,

remember once at starbucks
i told you that when i sing certain hymns
or christmas carols or patriotic songs
my throat closes with emotion
and i literally cannot voice
the next notes until i force myself
to recover because i don’t want to miss singing
the rest of the song? even before i could finish
telling you, you yelped,
me too! me too!
we laughed and exclaimed
and laughed and exclaimed
and then went on to who knows
how many more topics du jour.
it was a little snippet of conversation
that probably didn’t take more than
two minutes of the two hours
we spent gabbing, but a snippet
that nonetheless lodged itself
firmly in my pat heartspace.

i’m guessing that was before
your cancer diagnosis, and therefore
years before
you died on a december day
that itself is now sixteen years gone.
but today is another december day,
one that neither
of us could imagine back then, and
adeste fidelis comes on the car’s sound system.
i crank up the volume immediately,
start singing
at full voice

until my throat closes

which is when you join in,
joyful and triumphant!
we manage not to
choke up at the same time
for the rest of the hymn.
between us,
eyes shining,
we don’t miss
a single note,
dear pat.

—dotty seiter

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Notes about poem and art:
• “december 15” speaks for itself, sings its own music.
• Painting the four sheets of paper gift wrap I used during the holidays was a satisfying and grounding part of December’s busyness, bringing light and warmth to days at the onset of the dark and cold of winter.