A Legacy of Love

We have a family tradition that stretches back as far as I can remember. Every Christmas Eve, we listen to the story of The Snow Goose, by Paul Gallico, narrated by Herbert Marshall and Joan Loring. As a child, my parents had the vinyl record in their collection, and a few years ago I bought it on iTunes perpetuate the ritual. This week, I found that the origin of the tradition dates back to the early 1950s when the recording was a Christmas gift to my mother’s family from Francis and Jessica Brett-Young, who shared the Christmas celebrations with them in Montagu all those years ago. Francis died in 1954, but the memory lives on.

Christmas Eve, for me, has become a time to reflect on the real values that underpin my life. Friends, family, and most of all, Love. Not just romantic love, but love in its most general form; compassion, empathy, kindness, forgiveness, honesty, humility, courage, understanding, and the multitude of other of Love’s derivatives. It’s fitting for me that at this time, we remember the birth and sacrifice of the Prince of Love for the sake of our mortal failings. A beacon of light in the darkness that is human existence.

How blessed I am to have an abundance of love in my life and what a gift to be given a chance to teach love to my children, so that they may carry the fire onward. Without love there is nothing but darkness and the void.

As I go through Life and try to piece the parts together; what will last and what will fade, what’s important and what’s just a distraction, I find increasingly and perhaps fittingly the paradox that everything of value and permanence is fleeting and ephemeral while at the same time there is no value in anything tangible. Life is only about Love and the tales of Love that live on once we’re gone, and life ends only when there’s nobody left to tell the tales of the Love that came before.

And so, at this time, I give thanks. For the love and light at the core of my being. For this crazy McSweeney clan that I was born into; a tribe of dreamers, artists, bleeding hearts, lovers and bards, with all their mortal failings and weaknesses. I love you more than you will know. Merry Christmas to you all.