Carrie Cox’s Corner

This song…

It’s haunting.

It haunts me.

It’s beautiful, but it brings tears to the rim.

Maybe because I have forgot.

Maybe because I haven’t always given a hand.

Maybe because I have hidden.

Maybe because in my two months shy of 40 years, I’ve finally learned that life IS but a vapor, and all we are really left with are memories.

Here we are again on the eve of another year. Here we are saying goodbye, again. I think that’s what haunts me the most: goodbye. It’s a farewell. It’s a final. I don’t like those. I like “See you later”s. I like “Let’s do that again.” But sometimes, seasons change, people leave, children grow up, things happen, choices are made, and what was is forever different.

Sometimes there are oceans between you. They cannot be crossed. Time cannot be rewound.

I guess that’s my problem. I don’t have the melancholy acceptance of the goodbye, and the “I won’t forget you, old friend” that Scot Robert Burns had in his famous melodic poem. I “rage against the dying of the day instead of going gently into that good” bye.

Nostalgia.

Bittersweetness.

But Beauty…

This old song evokes it all. I never understood until now why my mom cried when she heard it. It seems such a strange thing to sing, this sad-sounding song, on New Year’s Eve when the celebrations are flowing.

I get it now.

Now….

I don’t want to forget.

I don’t want to never bring to mind.

I want to love deeply.

I want to live richly.

I want to remember those who have gone and those who are still here.

But…

I want to accept that some are no longer in my life, even though I still love them, even though I cherish our memories.

And it’s okay.

I want to accept that life is about change and seasons, but God is the one thing that changes not, and that can give me courage to face the changing seasons of life.

I want to open myself up, not shut down and hide.

I don’t want to be haunted by regret next year.

I now understand that the goodbye is part of the hello. We must accept what has passed this year. Give it place. Feel it. Embrace it. Cry over it. And then with a toast, and a hand, and a wish, we say goodbye: to both the bad and the good. We are ready now to live with what the new will bring.

So no matter what happens to us this year. No matter the distance or the seas between. Here’s a cup of kindness, friend, from old times’ sake-
“For auld lang syne.”

Should old acquaintance be forgot 
And never brought to mind 
Should old acquaintance be forgot 
And auld lang syne 

For auld lang syne, my dear 
For auld lang syne 
We'll take a cup of kindness yet 
For auld lang syne 

We two have paddled in the brook 
From morning sun till dine 
But seas between us broad have roared 
Since auld lang syne 

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne

And there’s a hand my trusty friend
And give us a hand o’ thine
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Here is a hauntingly beautiful rendition of this song that I listened to while writing. I don’t know these musicians, but I appreciated their artistic representation of this song, especially the verse about gathering daisies.