Stells!
It's such a pleasure to read your poems. Your form and your breaks allows for a slow, meditated kind of reading that suits this contemplative narrator. What brings me in: "Some people are catapulted ... to that wide, white space" —I love that line. It brings up the image of death and heaven and that "light at the end of the tunnel" kind of cliche, but I like where the poem takes me, how it spins to the place where life slows down and you share these holidays with loved ones and you re-evaluate the important moments, it brings it more to earth and grounds and gets me to relate to those memories in a general fashion.
I think improvement wise, the piece overall has a "general" feel, and I think for future edits aiming for more specificity can help anchor your readers, but also may even leave a more lasting impression by giving us a greater degree of connection. I'll point out what I mean by general in my technical edits, but content-wise, I love this gem of an idea of that time slowed-down when we realize what matters, I love also the book-ends - I connect in my mind the twitchy heart and threads and sternum to the "domestic miracles" in the last stanza, and I picture setting the table together with family, shoveling the snow, that kind of work, and it pleases me 
The barber line throws me off because at first with the throw-in of "sternum" I was imagining more of a surgeon. With barber though, I wonder if it's not referring to a waxing event, I like that idea a lot less as it seems more disjointed and not as connected quite yet.
Some technical things:
Our entry point: "The" barber, while marginally more specific than saying "a" barber, is still a distance and generalness, compare to: our barber or cornerstreet barber. I also don't think "gnaw" is quite the word needed here. There is in general a fusion of connotations in that first stanza that makes it difficult to unravel, so I would consider striking through the words that do not help and polishing that first stanza a tad. Fusion-effect can be fun, but for the more straight-forward nature of the piece seems out of place. An example - we have barber (hair, local, community, commonplace, got it) --- gnaw is very much a kind of hungry/twitchy/animalistic verb --sternum though is very precise and scientific. Bypass is another precise and scientific word, whereas "essence" gives more a philosophical feel, I am fine with those two pairings, the last two lines of that stanza: re-embroider, threads, fraying hem, that is all domestic c; So there is a lot to unpack here and we're pulled in all these directions with not much to gain.
Now, while the words themselves are powerful - catapult is very powerful. The use of "some" also is very good. It points to a lot that is "unsaid". THe fact that only "some" people are catapaulted" means there are also "some" who delve into this world in other ways, perhaps they drift peacefully, or perhaps they sink miserably, either way, my imagination appreciates this line very much and how it is able to do so much in so little lines, right? The kind of specificity and precision here helps you leaps and bounds whereas the generalness of "rhythmns of life" waters your message and can be helped by "showing" here, a scene-in-a-line of what *your* rhythm looks like, whether it is suitcases and tied leather shoes with matching socks, or the mechanical polishing of a stethoscope, I dunno.
"on a stubborn dead man's chest" <- You don't need this at all c: It rings cliche to me too.
"smug knowledge" and "small domestic miracles" I love, love, love for as much as it says leaves a lot that is unsaid and implied! Whereas "people will drown / in the congestion of their own failures" is a bit more general and not as powerful beside it. It is a lot more helpful to point to a specific failure here to tie it all together.
Anyway, I hope this helps though I am always wiling to chat it out with you. Happy new years!
~ Audy
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