All I want for Christmas...

Mariah Carey’s anthem is just everywhere, jingling away at every turn, but for me it’s a massive trigger.

Chris Rea is Driving home for Christmas
The Eagles’ plead… Please Come Home for Christmas
Sinatra croons the promise I’ll be home for Christmas and the million covers tell us this IS a thing.
Even the hard bitten Pretenders get into the ‘he’ll be back at Christmas time’ in 2000 miles.

I remember a time when these songs would bring excitement, full of the emotion of reunion, evoking the promise that we will all be together around the tree… something that I can never have again.
And so, instead of excitement, they now bring sorrow. Deep sorrow.

Jesse texts “Is he back yet?”
Yes, we do this a lot.
It’s part wishful thinking and part recognition that the missing is exhausting.
How I yearn for the day I can say “yes, and Gidi too.. we are on our way!”
Oh! What I wouldn’t do for just one wish…

And now, I am in murky territory.

As a small child I was watching something I shouldn’t.
They wished for their loved one to return from the dead only to have them alive but screaming in agony from the embalming fluid.
I was very small when I saw that and still today, at 63 it haunts me.
Careful what you wish for, Sheila.

If I wished Luke back, would he be plagued by the agony of opioid dependency?
So, now it’s 2 wishes that I need.
Wait! I think to my imagined genie… (because it’s good to think this through in advance, just in case) what about Luke’s damaged organs? the effect of the overdose? the cremation?… and I am off down a twisted rabbit hole.

Can I use a wish to bring back Gidi?
What about Gidi’s injuries? are they righted by this wish?
How many wishes can I have?
How many do I actually need?
I have a lot of questions.

In the absence of my actual genie I turn to the world wide web for the origin of the famed 3 wishes…
It’s dark in there.
It dates back to 2000BC Mesopotamian mythology with Gilgamesh and later in One Thousand and One Nights from the Islamic Golden Age to which was added the origin story of Aladdin (the only success story, but apparently the original tale gives him infinite wishes). The jinns, the genies, Grimm’s Fisherman’s Wife and the vile tale of The Monkey’s Paw.
Then there’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, a film that tells tales of the djinn’s history and adds a modern slant to Tilda Swinton’s wishes.

The origins of the concept vary by culture and century, but the theme of wishes and their consequences is consistent. It all seems so promising yet ends so cruelly…
The moral lessons of unlimited power and how you need the second and third wish to right the wrongs of the first, sends me spinning, seeking a way to out-smart the mythical system.
How do I get the original Aladdin’s infinite wishes? and which exact wishes do I need?…

For fuck’s sake! Mariah’s All I want… got complicated fast.

But darling Luke, I hesitate as I write, for fear of unintended consequences…
All I want for Christmas is…
No! I daren’t.
But I think you know.
Tears fall.