A song to my wife at Christmas
DEAR EDITOR,
It’s been a terrible Christmas. It was ruined by two factors, one of which was peculiar to Guyana. Christmas around the world today is being married because of the worldwide lockdown. It was caused by a pandemic not a single person in the world predicted in 2019.
When the lockdown reached Guyana and curfew started at 6PM, the capital city of Georgetown looked like a ghost town. I walk my dog most afternoons at the back of Giftland Mall in front of Eddie Boyer’s commercial gates community, Demerara Estates. I’ve been doing that for years now. This year, there was a chilling experience in that place.
As the afternoon tapped off my dog and I were alone. No one could be seen walking past Giftland Mall’s large compound. Nobody drove out of Demerara Estates, no one drove in. The sadness was exacerbated by the election rigging. If people were unhappy at home at 6PM, that depression was compounded by the prospect of a dead future.
At times, a driver entering Demerara Estates would stop and ask me for my opinion and I would echo the words of Trinidad’s Prime Minister Keith Rowely, “It’s not going to end well.” There were many afternoons I sat with my dog in that compound while clouds of uncertainty spread over the land and my mind went back to the days when I never thought I would be married, never thought I would be a father, never thought we would get into one of the best universities in the world.
Those were the days of the rigid election under Burnham, and I saw friends and relatives rushing like crazy to get out of Guyana. Nobody believed there would be a future for Guyana. Those visions came down in psychedelic colors and rumbled my mind during the election rigging. Rowley’s words scared me. I imagine another Guyana under Forbes Burnham, another dead country. There were times in that compound I felt like I had horribly betrayed my wife. She secured a good job after she finished university in Canada and followed me silly to Grenada then back to Guyana.
As I was typing this column, I read where dozens of citizens demanded that the government bring in a forensic team from Argentina to investigate the death of three young men. None of those names ever felt what came over me as I walked my dog in the deserted parameters of Giftland Mall as Guyana’s future looked dead because our right to vote was being taken away from us. An entire country was being stolen but these people were quietly brought to life suddenly over three killings.
The pandemic and election rigging depressed the majority of people in this country and has undoubtedly killed their mental vitality to celebrate this year’s season. On Wednesday night, I took my dog to a drive in Massy Supermarket compound to see what Christmas shopping was like. I live across the road from Massy and the cars I saw outside the supermarket were much smaller than what I observe when walking my dog at that place too on an average night. And this was two days before Christmas.
The pandemic and devaluations of the election hit Guyana hard and one needed mental comfort to stay alive. I got that from the woman I married 42 years ago. This Christmas, I dedicate the song below to my wife. I did this once in a previous column. I do it again because this song vividly illustrates the way I feel about someone who made me survive decades of nihilism in Guyana. Many famous artists have commented on this song but to me Italian baritone singer Patrizio Buanne has the best version
You are My World (Il Mio Mondo)
You are my world, you are the breath that takes
You are my world, you move every time
Other eyes see the stars up in the sky
But to me they shine within your eyes
As the trees reach for the sun above
So my arms reach out to you my love
With your hand resting in mine
I feel such a divine power
You are my world, you are my night and day
You are my world, you are every prayer I pray
If our love ceases to be
Then it’s the end of my world
With your hand resting in mine
I feel such a divine power
Il mio mondo cominciato is tea
Il mio mondo finira con te
E You are me lascerai
In feet one momento
Tutto me
Tutto me finira