The dying of the year
I posted recently about the holidays and how they can be so difficult. I promised to write more about grief and loss, and how to celebrate the holidays if you’ve suffered a terrible loss in your life.
You may not want to celebrate at all. At best, this might be a quiet year for you. No lights, no big parties, and maybe you’re even tempted to forget the holidays altogether and work through the whole season. All of these feelings are normal, and I have only one suggestion:
Do something, no matter how small. Sometimes people in grief will simply light one candle on an important day–a day like Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year’s, a day that feels empty and cruel and cold without the person they love. But they do light that candle. They light it because as awful as it might be to keep a holiday in the midst of such raw absence, such deep grief, it is even worse to deny that there are special days. It’s worse because it can actually deepen the sense of loss. Not only did your beloved die, but New Year’s died, too. Not only did you lose your job, or suffer a terrible health crisis, or experience another kind of personal tragedy, but Christmas died, too.
If you’re going through something like this right now, then the holidays probably won’t be festive or “merry” or cheerful. But they could be a way for you to stop, and rest, and breathe, and, yes, grieve. Most retailers won’t tell you this, but the holidays are good for that sort of thing too.
Sometimes November and December are called “the dying of the year,” meaning that it’s a good time–a time when (in the Northern hemisphere) the earth herself is dying into winter–to reflect on our own experiences of loss and death, and wait for renewal and hope as the year turns. I encourage you to do this hard work in your own life.
And–I mean this seriously–Happy Holidays.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:43 pm
thanks for this post…. We found out the day before thanksgiving that it would be our last turkey day and christmas with Grandma, she has 6 to 9 months to live roughfly…. Its hard but with an 11 year old and grandma loving christmas we all ready have the tree up. We are just taking it one day at a time but it is there every day hanging like a dark cloud full of cold winter rain. And we go on….. waiting.