Holidays and Grief: You Need a Plan

When faced with the upcoming holidays and already rapid heartbeat and fading strength, the last thing a bereaved parent wants to hear is , “Make a plan”.

But the truth is, if you don’t it will be so. much. worse.  

fail to plan plan to fail

No one can tell YOU what the plan should be.  Each family is unique.  Each year brings different challenges-declining health, moves, children or grandchildren born and a dozen other variables that must be accounted for THIS year versus years past.

This will be our fourth set of holidays without Dominic and the one thing that has been, and continues to be, important is communication.  I need to communicate early enough and plainly enough to extended family what I and my immediate family can bear for this year.  If I don’t, there will be misunderstandings and hurt feelings all around. 

This year will be different than last year. 

That’s something surprising to me this side of child loss, nothing seems “fixed”.  No new tradition can take the place of the traditions we embraced before Dominic ran ahead to heaven.  So every year I find myself feeling my way in the dark.

one bulb missingAnother important note:  Even though my loss is great I am not the only one whose heart should be honored this time of year.  I may not be able to participate in everything others want to do, but I can decline gracefully and encourage them to celebrate well without fear I’m upset about it.

If this is your very first holiday season after loss, I highly recommend keeping things low-key, whatever that looks like for you. 

Some families find that keeping tradition is helpful.  Some find it unbearably painful.  Some want to run away from familiar places and others want to wrap their hearts in shared memories.

Over the next few days I will be reposting past articles about how to survive the holidays after loss.  I hope they cast a little light on this hard topic.  Take what helps and leave the rest. 

It’s your call. 

Your life. 

Your heart. 

No one else gets to judge how you choose to do (or not do) the holidays. 

its ok to not feel like celebrating christmas

 

There’s no wrong way to be a lizard in the sun

From fellow blogger Lee Botha who lives in South Africa.

This is so good! And so freeing! Since losing my son, my prayer life is reduced to begging mercy and grace and then waiting for the Spirit to breathe life afresh into my heart. I sometimes feel guilty that I can’t muster the long-winded (or multi-page) prayers I once could.

She’s right-there is no wrong way to be a lizard in the son or a child of the Most High basking in His holy presence, seeking His fatherly face.

I love this.

Lee Botha's avatarLee's Notes

light-through-the-leavesImage source.

I love November. It’s the summer month par excellence for me. Early mornings, days stretching to their apogee, their afternoons often swallowed up by thunderstorms and rain that beats the smell of ozone from the earth. November is full of the dance of some old thing we’ve mostly lost to the advent of 24-hour living. Novembers are simply magical.

November isn’t hugely productive as a rule. Combined with the mischievous wink of summer and sun and the approach of Christmas (tacky, seasonally inappropriate decorations seemed to go up at the stroke of midnight on the 31st of October) and the beckon of the schools closing for the year, November is about as circumspect as a toddler presented with a bowl of candy. It’s an odd time to be thinking about the Advent season and the new year, when so many things seem to be telling you to stop…

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Let Me Know You Remember

As families gather around tables and in backyards to celebrate fall birthdays, Thanksgiving and (soon!) Christmas, my heart longs even harder to hear Dominic’s name.  

Of course I remember him-he’s my son-and of course others do too. 

But it is especially helpful this time of year to have friends and family speak of him aloud.  

may cry if you mention their name

Of course I may cry. 

I cry often anyway. 

But if I cry because you remind me of the good friend Dominic was to you or because of a special memory you shared with him, they are tears of joy as much as tears of longing. ❤

let them know you know they lived

Repost: Time Change

I wrote this two years ago and it still resonates with my heart.  If there was one message I could scream from the rooftops this side of child loss it would be this:  Everything, EVERY. THING. except time and people can be replaced.

Think about it.

Is it difficult to rebuild a home or replace favorite keepsakes, yes-but not impossible.  But it is utterly and unforgivingly impossible to recapture lost moments and there is no one but God that can breathe life into a body.

Please, please, please don’t take your people for granted thinking, “There’s always tomorrow.” Sometimes there isn’t.

Every spring and every fall we dutifully make the rounds to our clocks and digital devices, putting them first forward an hour and then back in an attempt to make the days “longer”.

As if time was in our hands.

The sun rises and sets according to the Creator’s schedule, we can neither speed the world’s turning, nor slow it down. We can only choose whether to be present in the moments He grants us.

Read the rest here:  Time Change

Grounding Exercise for Anxiety

Grief has a traveling companion:  Anxiety.  And it is relentless.

Before Dominic ran ahead to heaven I had no idea that along with sorrow, missing and heartache, I would have to battle a creeping sense of dread that could turn an ordinary day into a nightmare.

I’ve learned to plan ahead and minimize triggers I can identify, but sometimes I find myself suddenly overwhelmed with no easy means of escape.

That’s when I apply this technique.

It is amazingly effective and can be done anytime, anywhere without another soul even knowing I’m doing it.

I begin by taking five deep breaths-often I will place my hand on my diaphragm to remind me to breathe deeply.

Then I find:

  • five things I can see;
  • four things I can touch (I don’t have to touch them but if I can, it helps-even my own fingertips or my shirt or purse);
  • three things I can hear;
  • two things I can smell;
  • one thing I can taste.

I use my fingers to silently count down the list. 

While it doesn’t always erase my anxious feelings, it always tames them. 

Taking charge and taking action (even silent, mental action) helps give my heart the space it needs to regroup and reassess the actual “danger” my body is responding to.

Try it.  It’s easy.  It’s free.  And it works.

grounding exercise fall trees

An Open Letter to the Mom Who Was Almost Me

I hesitated to post this but plunged ahead for two reasons:

  • I want my friends to know that I welcome the opportunity to pray for them and their children-my heart longs to join in petition for the life of another mother’s child.
  • But it still hurts to hear too much detail about some things-you have no idea how well my imagination can fill in the gaps in stories of twisted metal and almost death.

So here it is.  I hope you receive it as it’s intended. ❤

heart baloon girl

Dear Mom Whose Son Survived the Accident,

I want you to know that I am beyond thankful that you will be spared my pain.  I prayed for your son as you requested-begged God to spare him.

They say misery love company but I say misery loves comfort.

I do not want one more parent to know the heartache of child loss.

Given the chance, I would not hesitate a moment to answer the Miss America question:  “If you could do one thing in the world to make it a better place, what would it be?” 

“I would make sure no parent ever had to bury a child.”

Not from disease.

Not from starvation.

Not from war or natural disaster or accidents.

No more out of order deaths!

Every parent would go to his grave assured his son or daughter would continue to carry the family legacy.

But that’s not possible.  So I rejoiced extra hard when YOUR son had that awful accident, yet lived.

You get to visit him in the hospital, take him home with medicine and physical therapy.  I met my son in the funeral home and could only choose a casket for his final resting place.

You will have this holiday season tempered by the shadow of what might have happened, but rejoicing in a second chance to make new memories.

This will be my fourth set of holidays without my son-without his presence at the table, his face around the Christmas tree, his stocking limp and empty because there’s nothing left for me to give him.

You were impatient when I asked you to respect how difficult it is for me to hear the details of your son’s accident.  Even in my joy that you will be spared my fate, it hurts to hear how close you came.  You were offended and that really hurt my heart.

I didn’t contact you; you contacted me.

I didn’t ask you to pray for me, you asked me to pray for you.

And I did. 

And I will.

Because even if you are insensitive, ungrateful and inconsiderate, I will ask God to continue to protect your son-that’s what a broken heart does.

It begs for mercy.

Love, 

A Broken Hearted Mama ❤

look into your own heart and refuse to inflict that pain

 

 

The Will of God

There are many things I do not understand about life this side of child loss.  Many more I do not like and wish were different. 

But this much I DO know:

God is here.

He has not abandoned me. 

He has not left me to walk this Valley on my own.  ❤

the will of God will never take you

#thankful AND #broken

I wrote this post Thankful But Broken, in November, 2015-just barely 18 months after Dominic ran ahead to heaven.

If that’s how I felt THEN, it’s even more how I feel NOW.

Both the thankfulness and brokenness have burrowed deeper into my bones.

Losing the earthly companionship of a child I love has shattered my heart into so many fragments that I can’t find them, much less piece them back together.

But it has also made me oh, so aware of each day’s blessings and of each moment’s sacred holiness.

be-thankful-for-today-change-in-one-moment

I can receive more freely because so much has been stolen.  I appreciate what I have because I know what it is to long for what can never be again.  I can both hold onto and let go of people and things and trust that in the end all shall be well.  Because I know exactly what it feels like when all is most certainly NOT well.

The cracks in my heart make room for more love, more joy (muted though it is) and more thanksgiving than my whole heart could have ever held.

heals the broken heartedI am truly thankful.  AND truly broken.

So my November exercise is to embrace BOTH.

My ‘Thankfulness Journal” has two lines for each day:  “I am thankful for” and “I am broken over”.  Like the Psalmist, I choose to breathe out my brokenness in lament and breathe in the promises of God in gratitude.

I am sad and shattered that this life is hard.

I am encouraged and comforted that God is good.

I can admit both and still be faith-filled.

faith is deliberate confidence

 

 

Halloween

Except for a few years early in childhood, I have never liked Halloween.  The combination of darkness and creepiness makes my skin crawl.

And now, this side of child loss it makes me angry. 

Why? 

Because for one night (really, for a couple of weeks), Americans not only think about death, they spend millions of dollars celebrating it.

Not celebrating ACTUAL death-not the absolute horror of being told your child is gone, gone, gone.  Instead it’s a fake, “funny”, silly made-up mockery of a very real, very awful truth.

Sometimes the “celebrations” involve desecrating cemeteries. 

And that makes me even angrier.

grieving-mother-at-grave

Graveyards are the final resting place of other people’s loved ones.  My son is there!  You don’t have the right to make his grave part of your truth or dare game.  

So just don’t do it!

What makes me even more upset is that people will talk for weeks about what they want to “be” for Halloween yet shut down the first mention of a bereaved parent’s pain.

Conversation about costumes, haunted houses and scary movies is invited, conversation about burial and broken hearts is taboo.  

Why, why, why do Americans embrace this paper mache version of death yet refuse to acknowledge or embrace the reality of death in daily life?

It’s no game.  It’s no holiday.  It’s nothing to laugh about or make jolly over.

It’s a very real, very painful, very awful part of my life.  

I won’t participate in making light of it.

pair of shoes

Repost: Don’t Want to Miss a Post? Here’s How.

I’m reposting this one just to help those of you that either want to catch every blog post and/or want an easy way to share them with friends and other bereaved parents.  ❤

I’m no tech expert.  I kind of blunder about like a blind mouse searching for cheese most of the time. So I feel you if you haven’t figured out how to make sure you get each day’s blog post.

For those that do want it each morning here are several ways to get it:

Read the rest here:  Don’t Want to Miss a Post? Here’s How.