Write It Down and Burn It
It’s December 30th, time for the obligatory year-end post.
Better writers than me end the year with a “best of” retrospective from the past year’s posts. We all know it’s a kind of cheat. Writing is work, and the holidays are when we try to leave work behind. So we write a paragraph or two to introduce our favorite piece from the past year, post it up, and get on with the nogging of eggs.
But I’ve only been at this for six months, and I just can’t pull off the “Here’s the best of my first twenty-five posts” with a straight face. After all, one of the objectives of writing on a weekly basis is to get better at it. If that’s working, and progress is linear, this should be the best thing I’ve ever written. (Narrator voice: It won’t be.)
A Solstice Gathering
Each year, a dear friend hosts a gathering at the winter solstice. There’s a bonfire and a ritual where we ceremonially burn written effigies of the things we want out of the world. There’s music and drink and a feast.
Wait a second—we might be a coven. There is always a goat or two nearby and potions of mulled wine are passed around. I really think this is a coven.
Damn—I might be a witch.
Anyway, under the dark of moonless night on December 21st, we each wrote down the names of things we wanted shunned from the world on scraps of paper and burned the scraps. I had planned to bring a copy of the New York Times and burn the entire thing, but this year’s solstice was on Sunday, and the Sunday NYTimes is up to a whoppin’ twelve bucks. Plus, it would have taken forever for that thing to burn.
I could have afforded a copy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution instead, but its final printing is tomorrow, and burning it would have felt like speaking ill of the dead. Even a coven doesn’t do that.
My desire to burn The New York Times was as much about what most media has become as it was about everything that the Times covers. All that’s included in the news these days. Instead, I saved myself some money and wrote “The New York Times” on a scrap of paper and turned it into ash.
Although the things that were burned that night were all worthy of going up in flames, one offering stuck with me. A fellow witch threw in his “I voted” sticker from the last election. He said he wanted to burn away his anger. (Us witches don’t conform to your outdated gender norms, BTW.)
I’m sympathetic. It is nigh on impossible to be an aware person in this world without being angry. I often say that I live in a bubble these days, that I’ve insulated myself and that’s the only way I can manage my own anger.
But I don’t know that that’s the actual mechanism. I’m engaged with the world enough to know what’s going on. I may pass on learning the details, but I get the gist. I understand the jokes on SNL Update when I happen across them. I just seldom find them funny.
We can only use our one precious life in this foundering world and I choose not to spend my days enraged. Instead, I try to turn toward gratitude. Sincere gratitude is a true antidote to anger.
And when I think of gratitude, I think of Robert Hicks.
A Late Eulogy
Many know Robert as the author of The Widow of the South and several other novels. He was that and much more—historian, art collector, benefactor of many good causes. He was a man of deep faith. And he was a raconteur extraordinaire. He knew everybody, including by sheer coincidence, the witch with the sticker.
He made an art form of being Robert. And I’m proud to say he was a friend.
He died in February 2022 after several years of dealing with cancer and its aftereffects. If you knew Robert, or just followed him on Facebook for that matter, you understood gratitude. As he lived his life to his fullest even in those later years, his thankfulness was apparent in everything he did. He would post his thanks for every IV of medicine that was pumped into him, and every encounter with friends or strangers that struck him.
Of course, Robert was a grade A writer and a heck of a storyteller, so what could have come off as maudlin or treacly was infused with genuine sincerity.
When I decided to write about him here, I went to his Facebook page to see some of the posts leading up to his death. It took forever to get to them because hundreds upon hundreds of remembrances and tributes have been written on his page since then.
I think of conversations I had with him the first time I visited him at his home, Labor in Vain. Robert was the kind of guy that could name his home and make it not seem silly. It was 2017 and political rage burned hot in my chest and it was all I could talk about. He tried to steer me elsewhere even then, telling stories and pouring me peach-flavored moonshine that was good enough to make me wish I was a southerner.
Robert knew how close to death he was in the last years. I still think of the package I got from him just a few months before he died, returning some books I’d lent him. He was just cleaning house, he wrote. I knew what he meant.
He wasn’t angry at his illness and the pain it caused him. He was thankful for his medicine even as it made him feel worse and only slightly prolonged the inevitable. He was grateful for his friends and the love they gave to him. I’d like to imagine what he’d say to me for writing this, but he was saint-like in those days.
I drove up to Robert’s wake and his funeral on that winter’s day. Famous people were everywhere. A past governor of Tennessee gave his eulogy. Grammy-winning musicians played at his wake while Oscar-winning actors read poems. People he’d known for decades and who he loved dearly were up front. I was a stranger and stood in the back.
That doesn’t diminish my debt to him though. My simple, unspoken eulogy for him is that I am grateful for his gratitude. From the cheap seats, that was the lesson of his life.
As 2025 comes to a close, it is good and right to say good riddance to the evil of this year and to hope for better in the next. But the thing I hope to nurture in 2026 is that sense of gratitude. Burn the election sticker and focus on the things that make it worthwhile. Gratitude is a precious thing and it is the path to a better life.
Song of the Week
Each year when the coven gathers we play this John Hiatt song. I fell in love with his music when I first picked up Riding with the King from the cutout bins in 1983. I saw him play a small coffeehouse in Rochester, NY in 1985 and have been waiting to see a show as good ever since.
And, just to close the loop, he was standing graveside when they buried Robert.