A few years ago, I had a grace-filled, heartwarming visit with another bereaved mama who came all the way from Maine just to hang out with me. And that was so, so good.
As she and I shared over coffee and tea, shopping and meals, lounging and walking we found so many ways in which our journeys have been similar even though the details are really very different.
One is this: There was a distinct moment along the way when each of us began to see light and color again in the midst of our darkness and pain and it was a turning point.
I will confess: I’m no better at this than the first set of holidays after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.
Every. Single. Year. has brought changes and challenges on top of the empty chairs round the family table.
Since Dominic left us we’ve had additions (two grandchildren and various significant others) and sadly, more subtractions (my mother joined Dom in 2019). We’ve dealt with distance, deployment, healthcare and retail work schedules, a pandemic and lots of other, less easily defined tensions and difficulties.
Calendars crammed weeks and months in advance and no white space left over to pencil in lunch with a friend even though we desperately NEED it.
It seems impossible to make that call, write that note or stop by and visit a few minutes.
How can I meet my obligations if I use precious time doing the optional?
But when the unexpected, unimaginable and awful happens, suddenly that calendar and all those appointments don’t matter.Balls drop everywhere and I don’t care.
Because when your family or best friend needs you, you come-no questions asked.
It cannot be overstated:holidays are extremely hard after loss. Every family gathering highlights the hole where my son SHOULD be, but ISN’T.
There is no “right way” or “wrong way” to handle the holidays after losing a child.
For many, there is only survival-especially the very first year.
These days also stir great internal conflict: I want to enjoy and celebrate my living children and my family still here while missing my son that isn’t. Emotions run high and are, oh so difficult to manage.
So I’m including some ideas from other bereaved parents on how they’ve handled the holidays. Many of these suggestions could be adapted for any “special” day of the year.
Not all will appeal to everyone nor will they be appropriate for every family. But they are a place to start.
I know it is hard. I know you don’t truly understand how I feel. You can’t. It wasn’t your child.
I know I may look and act like I’m “better”. I know that you would love for things to be like they were: BEFORE.But they aren’t.
I know my grief interferes with your plans. I know it is uncomfortable to make changes in traditions we have observed for years. But I can’t help it. I didn’t ask for this to be my life.
I know that every year I seem to need something different. I know that’s confusing and may be frustrating. But I’m working this out as I go. I didn’t get a “how to” manual when I buried my son. It’s new for me every year too.
You don’t have to bury a child to know that changing long-standing family traditions around holidays is a hard, hard thing.
Just ask a parent trying to work out Thanksgiving and Christmas for the first time after an adult child marries. Suddenly the way things have “always been” are no longer the way things are.
Holidays typically involve so many more people and family members than everyday get-togethers and each person brings expectations, emotions and personal history to the table.
So, that is why I decided to run this series of posts NOW. Because one of the things I have learned over the years is that giving people time to adjust to change is a good thing.
The first set of holidays after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I was both numb and absolutely devastated.
Our family’s loss was fresh enough that folks understood if we just couldn’t do ALL the things or even anything. And that’s pretty much how we blundered through.
The next year, which was more than eighteen months post-loss, it was harder to explain to others how my heart was still oh, so raw and how the thought of “celebrating” still felt overwhelming.
I didn’t want Dominic’s absence to dominate the holidays but I couldn’t pretend it didn’t make a difference.
So I realized I was going to have to speak up and plan ahead because no one else was going to do it for me.
Here is the first in a series of posts I wrote that year-for myself, for my own family to read and to share with the bereaved parent community in the hope they could share with THEIR families and friends.
Our own holiday observations have changed in the years since I wrote them but the principles remain the same.
❤ Melanie
I live in Alabama where we are still sweating buckets under the late summer sun, so I understand if thinking about the holidays is the furthest thing from your mind.
School just starting, new routines in place-am I crazy?
Well, yes (you can find plenty of folks to back you up on that) and no-the days keep coming, one after the other, and these big days will be here sooner than we think.
And for grieving parents, it takes some thinking, some planning and some preparation to meet both extended family’s expectations and extra responsibilities at Thanksgiving and Christmas while carrying a load of sorrow and pain.
One thing I am learning in this journey is that even though I wish someone else would blaze the trail for me, I’m going to have to do it myself. And because every major milestone is overflowing with emotional booby-traps, I have to plan ahead.
Reading back through these posts has been both painful and hope-filled.
One will be celebrating the healing my heart has experienced and the next will be mourning how much different my life IS from the picture of how I thought it WOULD be.
A theme running through them all is how very important it’s been for me to have safe people and safe places to express both.
2016: Another Day
I wake and you are still gone.
The cats tap-tap-tapping on my arms and face declare the day has begun despite the dark and I need to climb out of bed.
Why?
What difference does it make?
I trudge downstairs, put the coffee on, feed the cats and settle into my chair to read and write.
Some of us have stories that need tellingNOW. We can’t wait until our age guarantees us a captive audience.
Because telling the stories helps our hearts.
A fellow bereaved mom who has a gift for finding exquisite quotes found this one:
Sometimes I think that if it were possible to tell a story often enough to make the hurt ease up, to make the words slide down my arms and away from me like water, I would tell that story a thousand times.
~Anita Shreve, The Weight of Water
Every time I tell the story of Dominic, it helps to keep him real.
It reminds my heart that he lived, that he mattered, that he matters still.
Can we stop hiding our sorrow and pain and struggles and difficulties and let people in on what’s going on?
I truly believe that if we did, we’d all be better for it.
Because no one-really, truly no one-is spared from some kind of problem. And for many of us, it has nothing to do with our own choices. It’s visited upon us from the outside.
It comes out of nowhere, happens fast and suddenly consumes every aspect of our lives.
If you are a believer in Jesus, you might think you should be immune to these hardships. You might do a quick calculation and decide that, on balance, you’ve led a pretty decent life and certainly God should notice and spare you and yours from awful tragedy.
Or you might look around and notice all those who leave hurt and heartache in their wake and wonder why they seem to live a charmed life while death and destruction have visited yours.
Maybe it’s grief brain or my autoimmune disease or some other biological issue of which I’m ignorant.
But I just don’t have the energy to be on guard, to defend my “territory”, to argue with everyone who might hold a different opinion or who might be experiencing life from a different perspective.
It happens in all kinds of ways. One friend just slowly backs off from liking posts on Facebook, waves at a distance from across the sanctuary, stops texting to check up on me.
Another observes complete radio silence as soon as she walks away from the graveside.
Still another hangs in for a few weeks-calls, texts, even invites me to lunch until I can see in her eyes that my lack of “progress” is making her uneasy. Then she, too, falls off the grid.
thelifeididntchoose 