Difficult December people

There have been a number of key December birthdays, in my family -- none of whom are living now.  It occurred to me this morning that my grandmother would have 120 years old today.

Heavens, she would have been annoyed!  Towards the end of her long life, she was getting weary of living, as piece by piece, like books being removed from a shelf, the things she enjoyed were taken from her: reading, knitting, music...

Mind you, my other grandmother would have been a bit over 123 years, had she lived to today, but I never knew her.  It's odd, thinking how people I actually knew, who were parts of my life, would be impossibly old now.  It's even worse for the Resident Fan Boy, whose parents were well advanced in age by the time he was born.  My late father-in-law, another December birthday would be 111.  My father, also born in December, would be well into his nineties.

Evocations of these difficult December people glow like the Christmas lights, not bright enough to read by, but strong enough to draw me to a standstill.