Should We Avoid Grief at Christmas?

I hauled the boxes down from the attic, opened the lid and picked out one of the objects inside. It had belonged to my parents. I held it as if it may break, and then I caressed it. I smiled. And then I cried.

My mother and father felt so close.

And so far away.

Why did I unpack this box? Was I cleaning out my dead parents’ home?

Or was I decorating for Christmas?

Don’t know? That’s my point. Decorating for Christmas looks a lot like the painful process of cleaning out a loved one’s home. Which typically occurs soon after a death, when grief is often in its rawest form.

No wonder the holiday can feel overwhelming. It’s full of grief triggers.

We open the boxes of bows and bulbs and pow! We’re bombarded with scents and sights that animate our packed away memories and sorrows. Here we sit with grief again.

So should we avoid Christmas altogether? And if so, for how long? Is Christmas lost to us forever?

As I consider how to answer that question, I think about my experience with sorting through my parents’ belongings and cleaning out their home. That task isn’t an unusual one.

But the job took me eight years. That is pretty usual.

Why did it take me that long?

In lieu of having my folks, I had their things. So I held their belongings tightly. I found it very difficult to toss, throw away or give away their books, clothes and keepsakes. With a generous, patient husband, I was able to conduct the clean-out project as quickly or as slowly as my body and spirit allowed.

And that was eight years.

Sometimes I avoided it. Sometimes I dallied around, focused on the sentimental journey and grieving their loss rather than the actual job of cleaning out the house. I thought if I let go of their things, I’d be losing parts of them. And I couldn’t bear that.

As I sorted through their things, I sorted through the bits and pieces of my grief.

That is just what I needed to do. It’s what we all need to do.

The less we take apart and look at our grief, the more it will ambush us. We think we’ve boxed it up, but it will pop out and into our lives. At Christmas. At Valentine’s Day. On birthdays. On a summer day. On any day.

Yes, even if we’ve mourned our parent, our spouse, our sibling, our child on all the Christmases before, we still don’t have them this Christmas. No matter how much grieving we’ve done, we grief them because they aren’t here this year.

Can I avoid the grief by avoiding Christmas? Not really. I can put off the grief. But it is still there. Festering.

I needed to go through those boxes at my parents’ home. But I also went through their things at the pace that was healthy for me.

Maybe Christmas isn’t doable for you this year. But Christmas isn’t lost forever.

I’m not going to pretend it will ever be the same. Nor that you will never feel Christmas grief again.

But if we go ahead and allow ourselves to “unbox” the feelings, to take them out, put our hands on them, to caress them, and then to cry over them, we will discover that someday the memories will make us smile more than cry.

We will discover joy again. And peace. We will discover Christmas again.

If you decorated this year, what ornament evoked a pleasant, comforting memory? If the tradition was too tough this year, that’s okay, too. Do what feels healing.

 

Copyright © 2019 by Toni Lepeska. All rights reserved. www.tonilepeska.com