holidays – Page 25 – thelifeididntchoose

“Get Out of Christmas Free” Card

I remember playing Monopoly as a kid and how much I treasured that “Get Out of Jail Free” card when I was lucky enough to draw it from the pile.

Because it meant that even if I landed in jail, I didn’t have to stay there.

As I walk this Valley of the Shadow of Death, I often wish there were cards like that for all sorts of seasons, places and situations. I can’t help them coming around, but I would love to be able to skip right over and move to the next thing.

Christmas feels like that this year.

Christmas is hard for all kinds of hearts for all kind of reasons. And unlike most other holidays that are only a DAY, the Christmas season drags on for weeks which makes it even harder.

Now, you know I’ve posted here about why I still put up a Christmas tree-because the lights remind me there is a limit to the darkness.

But, that said, I want to offer a “Get Out of Christmas Free” card to other hurting hearts who just can’t manage even a lighted tree this time of year.

Shake off the guilt. Wash off the worry. Step free of others’ expectations.

There is no biblical imperative to celebrate the birth of Christ. None.

And there is certainly no biblical imperative to dress up the celebration with all the cultural trappings we’ve added over centuries.

Furthermore, if you get right down to it, there is strong evidence that Jesus wasn’t born anywhere near December 25th.

So if your heart cannot bear the thought of one more holly, jolly song, one more hap-hap-happy get together, one more frenzied rush to the store for a forgotten present or pantry item-just choose to sit this one out.

It is possible to go through the month of December without caving in to consumerism or being guilted into celebrating when your heart’s not in it.

Close the blinds. Let the telephone go to voicemail. Fast from social media and turn off the TV.

The days will pass with or without your permission and January promises a fresh start.

It’s OK. I promise.

How To Survive December With a Broken Heart

It comes up again and again-and not just for the parents facing their year of “firsts”: How do I survive December with a broken heart?

There’s no single answer or list of things to do that will suit every family.

But there are some general principles that can make even this awful reality a little easier:

Be gentle with yourself. Accept that you will not be able to do all the things you could do before child loss. Understand that tears will fall at the most inconvenient moments and grief waves will take you under when you least expect them to. That’s OK. You do not have to be strong or brave or keep smiling when you are sad. Feel what you feel. Do what you need to do.

Be honest with others. No matter how wonderful it would be if they could truly understand what it feels like to bury a child (without the experience, of course!), it is not the way things ARE. So if you need something from someone, speak up. If you don’t want to go to this or that, say so. If your heart can’t take one more family gathering or meal, send your regrets and stay home. Use “I” statements and say something like, “I’m just not able to participate in gift-giving (or whatever) this year. My heart won’t take it.” They may not like it. But they can’t argue with your experience.

Do not let people cross the boundaries you set up to protect your heart. Once you have figured out where you need to draw the line and have communicated that to others, hold fast. It’s really just fine to not return phone calls or text messages designed to force you to meet others’ expectations. You don’t have to be rude, but you also don’t have to submit your heart to constant trampling.

Be open to change. This is the fourth set of holidays for me without Dominic. Each year I’ve entered the season with certain ideas about how they will go, what will and won’t be helpful, and where I needed to set boundaries. And every year I’ve made adjustments. Some things I thought I COULD do, I couldn’t. Some things I swore I’d NEVER do, I’ve done. Work schedules, plane delays, illness, or even happy surprises alter plans and require adjustment.

Remember that December doesn’t last forever. As hard as this season is, it is only a season. The earth turns, the sun rises and the days pass. If you spend the month in bed with the covers over your head, January will still roll around. If you get up and participate (whatever that looks like for YOU) then January will also show up on schedule.

These days are just like all the rest: in the end we survive them one breath, one moment at a time.

But we do survive.

Holidays and Grief: Some Practical Ideas

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.

Read the rest here: Practical Ideas for Dealing with the Holidays after Child Loss

Holidays and Grief: What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family

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.

So I’m trying to make it easier on all of us.

I’m trying to be brave and think ahead and offer up what I can to help you understand.

Read the rest here: Grief and Holidays:What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family

Holidays and Grief: Surviving Siblings

I have never wanted to make my life journey with blinders on. I realized young that MY perspective is not the only one. I understand that more clearly now.

So I try hard to think about, acknowledge and accommodate the feelings and needs of others.

But it’s especially challenging since Dominic left us. And doubly so this time of year when every sight, smell and song screams, “It’s the holidays and HE IS NOT HERE!“

I may not be as thoughtful to some in my circle as want to be, but I will expend every ounce of energy and effort I can muster to make space for my living children’s needs during this season.

I promised them the day Dominic ran ahead to heaven our family would not be defined by what we have lost. I committed right then and there we would not sanctify Dominic, wouldn’t whitewash his ornery ways and would not put him on a pedestal against which they would be measured for the rest of their lives.

What I didn’t say, but purposed in my heart, was that I would not allow my own feelings of grief, sorrow, missing and despair to rob them of the mother they deserve. I would not stop being there for THEM-because, let’s face it-Dominic didn’t need me anymore. He is safe in his eternal home.

THEY are here with me in this less-than-perfect, messy and painful world we have to navigate together.

So when I’m working on holiday plans, the first thing I do is ask them what they need from me. I want them to have a safe space to express what’s hard for THEM this year. I welcome ideas, frustrations, hopes and dreams.

I will not shut them down because my heart is hurting.

I know what I think-I have to listen to know what THEY think.

I don’t conduct a sit down interview but over the course of a few days or weeks, I ask probing questions, offer potential scenarios and try to hear the heart behind their words when they answer.

Here are some of the things I ask my kids. Maybe they will be helpful for your family as well:

What’s your work schedule for Thanksgiving/Christmas?
Do you have any other major commitments that we need to work around?
How do you feel about what we did last year? What worked for you, what didn’t work?
Is there something special you really want to do this year?
Is there something you absolutely do NOT want to do this year?
How’s your head going into the holidays? What are you struggling with? What’s easier than this time last year?
Do you need something from me to make the holidays easier?
When would you rather have the main meal? Do you want/need to invite friends or co-workers?
What would the ideal Christmas Eve/Christmas Day look like for you?

There are dozens of corollaries to each of these questions. As my children share, I try to explore the edges of the conversation and probe a little further to get at what is really going on. I am open about my own feelings and fears for the season. I’m honest about where we can compromise and where, because of trying to manage everyone’s needs, we can’t.

I always assure them we will continue to work together, to adjust and to muddle through the best we can.

Humans are flawed and fragile and hearts are unpredictable.

Frustration is inevitable at some point.

Don’t apologize for tears.

We will not have thought of everything.

And that’s OK.

Holidays and Grief: Having the Hard Conversations

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.

Read the rest here: Grief, Holidays and Hard Conversations

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.

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.

Another 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.

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.

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.

Fault Lines: Bereaved Parents and Social Anxiety

I’m no geologist, but from what I understand, earthquakes are nearly always “about to happen”. Fault lines guarantee it. Pressure is building underneath the surface of the earth and when it reaches a level that can no longer be contained, it spews.

Can I just let you in on a secret?

Bereaved parents are full of fault lines.

Many of us are nearly ready to blow almost every single minute, yet hold it in and hold it together. If you could put a meter to our temple and measure how close we are to a come apart, you would be amazed that it happens so rarely!

And this is why we sometimes say, “no” to an invitation. It’s why we stay home from church or baby showers or weddings. Not because we are anti-social, but because social situations present unique challenges to our desire to keep it together.

We don’t want to become the center of attention when the center of attention should be the mom-to-be or the wedding couple or the birthday boy.

It may be months or years or decades since our child ran ahead to heaven. And you may think that’s enough time to “get over” or “get past” or “learn to live with” his or her absence. In some ways it IS. Most of us have a “game face” we plaster on to make it through ordinary days and even some extraordinarily difficult ones.

But underneath the veneer of “everything’s OK” there are the fault lines and when extra pressure is applied, we just know we might blow.

Many times I want to be there, really I do. If I choose not to be, know that it’s because I am trying to be thoughtful, not ugly. I stay home out of love, not disrespect.

So please extend grace.

Give me the benefit of the doubt.

Let me bow out gracefully when I know in advance my heart won’t be able to hold on.

It’s best for both of us, really. ❤

Trying to Hold off the Holidays

Here they come round the bend like a pack of dogs chasing that rabbit on a racetrack.

No way to slow them down, no way to step to the side and ward off the relentless message that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming soon-so, so soon.

Internet ads scream, “You’ve got to buy it NOW! You’re running out of time!”

Billboards, radio and television ads, and calendars count down the days.

Decorations assault my eyes and ears and nose (thank you pumpkin everything!). I cannot get away. There’s no where to hide.

So I have decided to take the offensive. I will do the things that must be done as quickly, as efficiently and as quietly as possible.

I am sending Thanksgiving cards instead of Christmas cards. I like the fall colors better than traditional yuletide hues anyway. No one says the yearly update letter has to be postmarked in December.

Our gift-giving is much simpler now than before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven. I’m less inclined to wrap dozens of presents to pile under the tree and more likely to give cash or gift cards along with a heartfelt note. So I will get all this together before the weather warrants a fire here in the Deep South.

I’m easily overwhelmed.

And too much of anything just seems like entirely. too. much.

Instead of loads of decorating that involves changing out all the everyday with holiday, I will put out a few bright things and lots of candles.

Flickering light in approaching darkness speaks hope to my heart.

I will concentrate on people, not on things. I am making space on the calendar for casual conversation instead of constant motion.

I won’t be swept along by the yuletide current, struggling for air, barely making it to January and glad the holidays are over.

Sip and savor.

That’s my motto.

I’m sticking to it.

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