As the holidays approach, I can feel the tension in my neck begin to build. I begin to anticipate how this year will look. What will we do? Who will be around us and will I make it through again?
I’m an anticipator. I stressfully anticipate and imagine all that could go wrong, all that could go right and any of the possibilities. I am hopeful. I am sad. I am grateful and I’m angry…all rolled up into one big holiday stress ball (just put a ribbon on me and I’ll be ready to go).
I begin to plan and I begin to wonder how I will manage missing my husband this year. Each year brings some new elements of missing him. Each year brings those same suffocating elements that I have missed all along…only now they seem more amplified than at other times of the year. This year I add the loss of my dad, who died in spring. So, not only is it me and my boys grieving someone this year, but all my siblings and my mom are added into the mix as we face the first holiday without my dad here with us.
I think this is when it gets so complicated. As with every different way there is to love, there are as many different ways to grieve. The things I loved and miss about my dad are different than those of my family. My boys miss their dad and now their grandfather in a different way than I do.
Grief is so individual. What works for me and helps me cope may not help my kids. The holiday season’s focus is family and when families feel broken it seems to me that the focus of the holiday is that our family is broken. Now this is not to say there wasn’t brokenness in our pre-grieving family; it is just a different, somewhat communal brokenness.
We can name something that we all feel loss about and that we all feel is missing. Although our loss is communal, the way we deal with it is not. We all deal with this loss in different ways. It can be with compassion or with animosity. It can be with withdrawal or the need to be surrounded with people we love. It can be by sleeping through the day or staying awake and busy all the time.
Much to my dismay, several dear friends lost a parent this year also. For me, it has been heartbreaking and interesting listening to their stories of loss and sadness. Each of our journeys has differences, each of our families have their own ways to deal with their communal loss.
Somehow, I feel more detached from the loss of my dad. I know this is because my husband died before my dad. I am coping with losing my husband every day of my life. My husband died at 46, leaving my children fatherless very young. I feel grateful that my dad lived to 75 years old. I had probably more than half my life with my dad alive.
So, I don’t know if this detachment I feel is because I have been building grief coping skills the last five years, because I’m shut down a bit because my heart has been broken so thoroughly or because I’m grateful for what I had and view has been so shifted by my children’s loss. What I am sure about is the holidays bring about a bevy of feelings, anxiety, sadness and hopefulness.
Hopefulness?
Yes, hopefulness. For every holiday that has passed, I have learned that I can survive loss. I have learned that love never dies and that is why the pain persists in me. I have learned that I was given great gifts…a loving husband and a loving dad. I have learned as much as I miss their physical presence with me during the holiday, it is a measure of how much I was allowed to love, of how much risk was taken by all of us.
Loving is a risk. Loving is a risk and without it life is hollow. So, now, during the holidays when I feel hollow and I miss my husband, my dad, and all those people who have died around me, I can remember that I can fill that hollow spot, that pain, that overwhelming sadness with the gratefulness that I was loved and was capable of loving.
I can be hopeful because I know that love and loss go hand in hand. Great pain after my husband’s death, great pain after my father’s death is only there because we all loved…no matter how perfect or imperfect that love is. I can be hopeful because through my grief, I have learned the importance of an open heart no matter how broken, shattered, or smashed that heart may be. Through the raw experience of grief, I learned the real importance of love.
Tags: belongings, funerals, money, Depression, signs and connections
Thank you for writing this. My father died in Feb. of ’09, and I wasn’t handling it well. He was 84. Then my husband died suddenly in May of ’09, at 47. I am struck by the contrast you mentioned, of the many years I had my father, and the short life of my husband. We only had 7 years of marriage. This is the second Christmas, which feels even worse than the first. I will never be okay. I wish I could feel the hope you talk about. I just love what you wrote.
I lost a mother, brother and father and some friends. While the grief was almost unbearable, I found comfort in going to church and listening to the word of God. While I am not a Christian and don’t believe in all that they do, for the most part I do believe in the word and power of God and the strength and healing that comes from that. Many people think that I do not believe in Christianity because I have only come to their church over the past few years. What they fail to realize is that I am 55 years of age and have been going since I was 4 and I didn’t believe in it then and I don’t now. But I do believe in the power of God and have had some truly AMAZING, MIND BOGGLING SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES TOO AMAZING TO BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN SPIRITUAL. I believe that God does lift us up from our earthly experience including death and grief. And I certainly believe that our souls go back to God once we die to those who believe. My mother held the same belief and told me that she asked for forgiveness for all her sins and that she made her peace with God. With that in mind, I do believe she is in a better place with God and so i am able to let her go and release her spirit to her highest good,–whatever that might be. I think we hold on to our grief and stay stuck in it, which is not a good thing because it attracts more negative energy to our soul which in turn is not a good thing. Only when we let go and learn to release our loved one into the care of God, can we release ourselves from pain and be free to live again. Go ahead and be happy. No one is going to punish you or think you are selfish or uncaring if you become the whole, happy person you are meant to be. I think that we all feel a certain amount of guilt if we’re not wallowing in grief and other people will think that we are selfish. Hog wash. Go ahead, let go with love and release yourself and them to be all that you are meant to be. Or if you’re not ready, then do both simultaneously. Grieve when you feel like grieving or when you can’t do otherwise, and feel happy and free when that feeling takes over you. But do it with love. It’s been a couple of years since I lost my mother and brother and I still cry when I think of them and miss them, but I am happy and vibrant and doing things again and enjoying life. I think that that’s the way they would want it as well. I sure hope someone doesn’t grieve over me to the point of being debilitated by it when I pass on. I prefer that they miss me and grieve a little but have respect for my soul’s journey and release me to my highest good for the good of us all.
In those early years, I didn’t have as much hope as I do now. I too remember the second year being much more difficult than the first. I always try to remember that everyone grieves differently. So far this year is a bit easier, but still some things still move me to tears. Grief is a difficult journey and so individual. Even the loss of one person is different to every one that knew them. Be gentle with yourself on your journey.
Thank you for your reply Christine. Hearing that you thought the second year was even harder than the first is very helpful to me. I appreciate the time you took to write.