Good Grief: During the “Joyful” Holiday Season

 The one constant in life is change. And the one change that is constant is loss. The loss that leaves us staggering, shaken and broken is the death of one we love. At no other time of the year do we feel our losses crush our hearts more than the proverbial “best time of the year,” the holiday season. No matter when a loved one died, the hole they left somehow gapes larger during this festive time of gatherings. If our losses are fresh, and this is the first holiday season without the one we’re now mourning, this time of year is an anguish of ambushing associations, making our loved one’s absence acutely agonizing.

 How can we minimize our own suffering as we make our way through this holiday season burdened by grief? If we’re not beset by loss but have are close to those who are, how can we soften their sorrow through this trying time?

 In order to help those of us who are bereaved through the holidays, we need first to understand what inner experience we’re struggling with.

 Loss Estranges Us From Everyone; Even Ourselves

When someone close to us has died, we withdraw into an echo chamber isolation-tank of private pain. Time crawls, food repels us, sleep eludes us, memory fails us; we cannot function in the simplest, most elemental roles. We feel estranged from everyone around us who bustles about the business of their petty affairs, while our very hearts are hemorrhaging and our world is shattered. In a particularly bitter coincidence, everyone else seems to be enjoying precisely what we’ve lost; their complaints would be our answered prayers;

-the couple whose baby died, sees newborns everywhere, their parents having the audacity to complain about sleep deprivation; 

-the adolescent stunned by the sudden death of his mom hears peers dumping on their “lame” parents.

What they’d give to have their deceased alive to complain about!

 Loss Looses an Emotional Avalanche

Our memory systems are such that when we are besieged by one powerful emotion, we get overtaken by memories of other times we felt aggrieved by  other deaths (or other abandonments, other traumas). Like an emotional avalanche rolling down the decline of our history, the pain of our loss snowballs, gathering magnitude and weight of the memories of similar losses.  The death of Audrey’s mom renews her grieving over her sister’s death three years ago. Sam’s dad’s death brings up afresh the death of his infant son a decade ago.

  Loss Confronts Us With the Stark Reality of Mortality 

Also erupting into consciousness for sober reflection is the haunting fact of our own mortality. Of course we could barely function if the looming reality of death occupied prime real estate in our brain every waking moment. (Reminds me of a greeting card I ran across recently; “I tried to live every day like it’s my last:….but people couldn’t stand my screaming “I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!” ) When someone dies, the defensive layer protecting us from the fact of life’s fragility and fleetingness gets shorn, confronting us with the stark truth of death. It’s a blow to the solar plexus; assaulting us with the fact that life is a terminal condition. (It also wakes us up to being more alive in the time we do have remaining here. If only we could preserve that awakened fresh appreciation of our every moment, rather than slipping back into the quicksand of presumptuous complacency…)

The “Jolly Happy Holidays” Confront Us With Cruel New Reminders of Our Loss

Our feeling alienated by our grief gets cruelly heightened by the festive happiness we’re all “supposed to feel” this time of year. Whenever we’re asked how we’ll celebrate the holidays, we’re reminded of the one who won’t be here this year. The customary foods, smells and routines, usually so comforting, now only trouble us as poignant reminders of our loss.  We catch ourselves shopping for and spotting perfect gifts for the very people we’re mourning. Holiday cards depicting cozy togetherness amplify our grief.

Rituals of the season remind us that their death deprives us not only of who they were to us, but also who we were for them; roles WE loved serving valued that we played.  Every direction we turn in, we’re hit with wave upon wave of freshly distressing ramifications of our loss.

GOOD GRIEF GUIDELINES DURING THE HOLIDAYS:

 1)Release yourself from bondage to petty holiday etiquette and obligations and just do what is best for you. You know better than anyone what you need and what you DON’T need; figure it out and be true to yourself.  Do you really want to go to the Regional Holiday Party for work? Where you encounter folks you only see annually, who will ask how your husband is, and you’ll have to say, “perhaps you didn’t hear, - actually, he’s dead? (!)” Plan alternatives for holiday rituals that will be too painful this year without the one you mourn; change the venue for Christmas gift exchange if too many memories will plague everyone in the same old locale; have someone else host the big family dinner if you just aren’t up for it.  Or order in Chinese. Are there holiday events that would be more strain than pleasure to attend? Formulate a gracious, honest decline for your RSVP’s; e.g.“Thank you for your kind invitation, but I’m finding I don’t have the spirit or energy for festive gatherings this season; I think it’s best for me to lay low. I hope you understand…” 

 2) Ignore platitudes about how you’re “supposed” to mourn; there’s but one right way, and that’s YOUR way. Grief is chaotic and discombobulating It is not systematically tidy, notwithstanding “stages of grief” that attempt to superimpose order on our messy despair.  Follow the coaxings of your own heart, not others’ (usually unsolicited) advice. If you, nonetheless, find yourself shamefully hiding your grief like a hideous secret, succumbing to the cultural denial of death, consider that we mourn the loss of loved ones in direct proportion to how much we’ve loved them. Indeed, mourning IS a WAY of loving those we’ve lost.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. Kahlil Gibran

 3) Err on embracing rather than avoiding your sorrow to enhance your healing. To avoid your grief is to leave a splinter embedded in your flesh: the pain of courageous extraction now spares you being poisoned by its eventual infection later. Unspoken grief calcifies and hardens your heart to love and liveliness around you.

Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow. They are the natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison out of the system. Here lies the road to recovery.~ Alexander Magoun

 4) Seek out folks you can open your aggrieved heart to and bypass folks who are threatened by honest grief.  You already feel estranged from life as you had known it; the last thing you need is to feel more estranged from yourself. Being with people who, for whatever reason, are threatened by loss, forces you to be false with them and untrue to yourself.  Personal authenticity in the face of life upheaval is your very life-preserver, while forced stoicism leaves you privately floundering. (And those who fawningly offer “you’re SO STRONG,” without having a clue how you’re really doing, are perhaps actually urging you to act strong so they can be spared the discomfort of hearing how very broken and bereft you actually feel…)          

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.    ~Erich Fromm

5)Enlist an ally to run interference with those friends or relations you cannot avoid but cannot abide this year.  (You know whom I’m talking about…!)  Ask your ally to keep an eye out and “rescue you” if you get button-holed by your mother-in-law who will, once again, embark on a dissertation on the shortcomings of today’s parenting, starting with your own.

 6)Start a new tradition of giving (in place of any you can’t bear any longer), that honors the memory of the loved one you mourn. Pay loving homage to the one you’re grieving by giving of yourself in a way that aptly reflects him/her.  For example, if you’re mourning your mom, who taught you love of reading, start a story hour at a homeless shelter and read books to resident children; if the sibling you lost was a role model to you, become a Big Brother or Big Sister in his/her honor; if the buddy you grieve over never resisted a neighbor in need, do Habitat for Humanity. In this way, you keep your deceased beloved alive by “channeling” their inspiring spirit  through your giving tribute.

 7)Practice the inverted Golden Rule: Do unto YOURSELF as you would do unto OTHERS. There is no glory in silent stoicism, only further estrangement from yourself and your support system. Often, you need comfort and companionship most when folks have all gone back to their busy lives. Your shock has worn off, the lonely quest of limping through the “season of Joy” in mourning sprawls in front of you. Now is when you need to have a stern talk with yourself, tolerate no hermit-like retreats into your shell or self-denying “shucks, I don’t want to impose on others.” Now is the time to treat your needs as you would want your dear friends to treat their own.

Let me put it this way: if a friend suffered the loss you just have, and was feeling the same emptiness and despair you do now, would YOU want your friend to refrain from calling YOU, reaching out to YOU? Would YOU consider it an imposition like you are now, for them to take you up on your offer to help them in any way? OR, indeed, would you feel grateful for the privilege to be helpful? Wouldn’t you feel touched and honored that your friend entrusted you with such a heart-felt request? So apply the same standard to yourself now with them. That’s what your friends want you to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~When We come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open.  And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature. ~Wayne Muller 

Good Grief: Managing Mourning

 During the “Joyful” Holiday Season

The one constant in life is change. And the one change that is constant is loss. The loss that leaves us staggering, shaken and broken is the death of one we love.  At no other time of the year do we feel our losses crush our hearts more than the proverbial “best time of the year,” the holiday season.  No matter when a loved one died, the hole they left somehow gapes larger during this festive time of gatherings. If our losses are fresh, and this is the first holiday season without the one we’re now mourning, this time of year is an anguish of ambushing associations, making our loved one’s absence acutely agonizing.

How can we minimize our own suffering as we make our way through this holiday season burdened by grief? If we’re not beset by loss but have are close to those who are, how can we soften their sorrow through this trying time?

In order to help those of us who are bereaved through the holidays, we need first to understand what inner experience we’re struggling with.

 Loss Estranges Us From Everyone; Even Ourselves

When someone close to us has died, we withdraw into an echo chamber isolation-tank of private pain.  Time crawls, food repels us, sleep eludes us, memory fails us; we cannot function in the simplest, most elemental roles. We feel estranged from everyone around us who bustles about the business of their petty affairs, while our very hearts are hemorrhaging and our world is shattered. In a particularly bitter coincidence, everyone else seems to be enjoying precisely what we’ve lost; their complaints would be our answered prayers;

-the couple whose baby died, sees newborns everywhere, their parents having the audacity to complain about sleep deprivation; 

-the adolescent stunned by the sudden death of his mom hears peers dumping on their “lame” parents.

What they’d give to have their deceased alive to complain about!

 Loss Looses an Emotional Avalanche

Our memory systems are such that when we are besieged by one powerful emotion, we get overtaken by memories of other times we felt aggrieved by  other deaths (or other abandonments, other traumas). Like an emotional avalanche rolling down the decline of our history, the pain of our loss snowballs, gathering magnitude and weight of the memories of similar losses.  The death of Audrey’s mom renews her grieving over her sister’s death three years ago. Sam’s dad’s death brings up afresh the death of his infant son a decade ago.

 Loss Confronts Us With the Stark Reality of Mortality 

Also erupting into consciousness for sober reflection is the haunting fact of our own mortality. Of course we could barely function if the looming reality of death occupied prime real estate in our brain every waking moment. (Reminds me of a greeting card I ran across recently; “I tried to live every day like it’s my last:….but people couldn’t stand my screaming “I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die!” ) When someone dies, the defensive layer protecting us from the fact of life’s fragility and fleetingness gets shorn, confronting us with the stark truth of death. It’s a blow to the solar plexus; assaulting us with the fact that life is a terminal condition. (It also wakes us up to being more alive in the time we do have remaining here. If only we could preserve that awakened fresh appreciation of our every moment, rather than slipping back into the quicksand of presumptuous complacency…)

The Harsh Reminders the Bereaved are Confronted With During the “Jolly Happy Holidays”

Our feeling alienated by our grief gets cruelly heightened by the festive happiness we’re all “supposed to feel” this time of year. Whenever we’re asked how we’ll celebrate the holidays, we’re reminded of the one who won’t be here this year. The customary foods, smells and routines, usually so comforting, now only trouble us as poignant reminders of our loss.  We catch ourselves shopping for and spotting perfect gifts for the very people we’re mourning. Holiday cards depicting cozy togetherness amplify our grief.

Rituals of the season remind us that their death deprives us not only of who they were to us, but also who we were for them; roles WE loved serving valued that we played.  Every direction we turn in, we’re hit with wave upon wave of freshly distressing ramifications of our loss.

GOOD GRIEF GUIDELINES DURING THE HOLIDAYS:

1)Release yourself from bondage to petty holiday etiquette and obligations and just do what is best for you. You know better than anyone what you need and what you DON’T need; figure it out and be true to yourself.  Do you really want to go to the Regional Holiday Party for work? Where you encounter folks you only see annually, who will ask how your husband is, and you’ll have to say, “perhaps you didn’t hear, - actually, he’s dead? (!)” Plan alternatives for holiday rituals that will be too painful this year without the one you mourn; change the venue for Christmas gift exchange if too many memories will plague everyone in the same old locale; have someone else host the big family dinner if you just aren’t up for it.  Or order in Chinese. Are there holiday events that would be more strain than pleasure to attend? Formulate a gracious, honest decline for your RSVP’s; e.g.“Thank you for your kind invitation, but I’m finding I don’t have the spirit or energy for festive gatherings this season; I think it’s best for me to lay low. I hope you understand…” 

2) Ignore platitudes about how you’re “supposed” to mourn; there’s but one right way, and that’s YOUR way. Grief is chaotic and discombobulating It is not systematically tidy, notwithstanding “stages of grief” that attempt to superimpose order on our messy despair.  Follow the coaxings of your own heart, not others’ (usually unsolicited) advice. If you, nonetheless, find yourself shamefully hiding your grief like a hideous secret, succumbing to the cultural denial of death, consider that we mourn the loss of loved ones in direct proportion to how much we’ve loved them. Indeed, mourning IS a WAY of loving those we’ve lost.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. Kahlil Gibran

3) Err on embracing rather than avoiding your sorrow to enhance your healing. To avoid your grief is to leave a splinter embedded in your flesh: the pain of courageous extraction now spares you being poisoned by its eventual infection later. Unspoken grief calcifies and hardens your heart to love and liveliness around you. Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow. They are the natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison out of the system. Here lies the road to recovery.~ Alexander Magoun

4) Seek out folks you can open your aggrieved heart to and bypass folks who are threatened by honest grief.  You already feel estranged from life as you had known it; the last thing you need is to feel more estranged from yourself. Being with people who, for whatever reason, are threatened by loss, forces you to be false with them and untrue to yourself.  Personal authenticity in the face of life upheaval is your very life-preserver, while forced stoicism leaves you privately floundering. (And those who fawningly offer “you’re SO STRONG,” without having a clue how you’re really doing, are perhaps actually urging you to act strong so they can be spared the discomfort of hearing how very broken and bereft you actually feel…)           To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.    ~Erich Fromm

5)Enlist an ally to run interference with those friends or relations you cannot avoid but cannot abide this year.  (You know whom I’m talking about…!)  Ask your ally to keep an eye out and “rescue you” if you get button-holed by your mother-in-law who will, once again, embark on a dissertation on the shortcomings of today’s parenting, starting with your own.

6)Start a new tradition of giving (in place of any you can’t bear any longer), that honors the memory of the loved one you mourn. Pay loving homage to the one you’re grieving by giving of yourself in a way that aptly reflects him/her.  For example, if you’re mourning your mom, who taught you love of reading, start a story hour at a homeless shelter and read books to resident children; if the sibling you lost was a role model to you, become a Big Brother or Big Sister in his/her honor; if the buddy you grieve over never resisted a neighbor in need, do Habitat for Humanity. In this way, you keep your deceased beloved alive by “channeling” their inspiring spirit  through your giving tribute.

7)Practice the inverted Golden Rule: Do unto YOURSELF as you would do unto OTHERS. There is no glory in silent stoicism, only further estrangement from yourself and your support system. Often, you need comfort and companionship most when folks have all gone back to their busy lives. Your shock has worn off, the lonely quest of limping through the “season of Joy” in mourning sprawls in front of you. Now is when you need to have a stern talk with yourself, tolerate no hermit-like retreats into your shell or self-denying “shucks, I don’t want to impose on others.” Now is the time to treat your needs as you would want your dear friends to treat their own.

Let me put it this way: if a friend suffered the loss you just have, and was feeling the same emptiness and despair you do now, would YOU want your friend to refrain from calling YOU, reaching out to YOU? Would YOU consider it an imposition like you are now, for them to take you up on your offer to help them in any way? OR, indeed, would you feel grateful for the privilege to be helpful? Wouldn’t you feel touched and honored that your friend entrusted you with such a heart-felt request? So apply the same standard to yourself now with them. That’s what your friends want you to do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open.  And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature. ~Wayne Muller