It doesn’t seem to matter how much time has passed since I lost my daughter Alexis (1997) and my son Emmanuel (2002). Getting around to this time of year remains a hostile threat. It’s the dangerous kind we can’t see coming even though we have been here a million times. It’s the grief drone attack we thought we’d evolved from and would “do better” with next time. Yet, here we are again.
Around this time of year, we start talking a lot about calendars, schedules, paid time off and how much leave we have for this holiday season. We strategize our travel plans, visits with family and friends and as we do so, retail shops pretty much rollout Christmas decorations around mid-October.
But there are some schedules not all of us follow. Specifically, as the grieving mother of two deceased children, I am referring to the unique and insidious grief drone attack schedule. If this is news to you, enjoy that for as long as possible. But it’s the schedule, the season that is looming and hovering just outside of our aching hearts. It’s the one we fear the most, and have also learned is unavoidable.
As the mother of two deceased children, I am contending with a different season: It’s the one that unleashes disasters, pain, sneak attacks and all out hellish states of grief and sadness. This type of drone attack didn’t start in October though. If you are a parent who has had to let go of your child, you know that our rough “season” starts way back toward the end of summer.
Sometime in August, we start seeing the fleets of school busses out on their training runs. The first time a school bus full of kids brings me to tears and feeling gut punched, I recognize that as marking the beginning of this season of what can be a non-sensical surprise series of grief attacks just buzzing above us, looking for the moment we are most vulnerable. In my experience this happens most often when I allow myself to experience Joy.
In fact there is no Joy anywhere in my life that is not coupled with the unimaginable but totally engaged grief drone that is just waiting to destroy a feeling of profound love and connection, as I have come to learn. If we don’t let our grief have a place at the table, it will always swoop down to get our attention and demand our respect. Grief has a guaranteed VIP pass into our consciousness and most often sabotages our Joy if that is the only way it can breathe.
Once we get used to the school busses coming and going, the ones our children no longer ride, we look up and start seeing signs of “Halloween” which is mostly a young persons holiday. However we did or did not get to participate in the festivities with our child before they died, we are still called to relive whatever that experience was, around this time of year.
Costumes, advertising, bobbing for apple parties just aren’t part of our lives now. Oddly enough, I thought I only missed out on the Halloween spirit when my children were little. But even now, when they’d be in their twenties, I can’t help but want to do something festive with my adult children like hike or go on a hay ride or eat a big chili dinner with fresh cornbread and cider. Those things are not for us.
And just when we get the trick or treat tradition behind us (and forgive ourselves for eating all of the candy we bought for the kiddos) here comes Thanksgiving. Here come Christmas specials. Here comes New Years! With all of its possibilities in a new year. All except the chance that our children who have died, will be part of them.
I study seasons and write a lot about our innate connection with nature in all of its splendor and brilliance. I am comforted that no matter what season I find myself in, it will pass. This is of course terrible news when I am in a season of prosperity or deep connection. And conversely it is a great relief when the season I am in sucks. Either way, we can’t control the comings and goings of the changing seasons. What we can control is how to best survive them, and if there is any Joy to be garnered, that we go for that too.
For every parent who has lost their child at a young age, or in full adulthood, I am extending my condolences for what is no less tragic than our own death. In some ways we do die, when we have to let go of our child. And I know, like you do, that the “holidays” aren’t the problem for us professional grievers. It’s more the timing that gets us turned upside down.
And just as I can ride three hours to a family dinner only to have Zach through up all over my white Christmas suit before we could even get into the house, I can also be grateful that we made it there at all. The beauty of embodying the inarguable truth that grief drones are just waiting to swoop in and threaten our experience, is that with all things we can learn to say “I see you, I hear you, I know you are there and I know you want attention…let’s take a walk this morning so that later you feel included and don’t attack me as I am taking Communion at Christmas Eve Mass, or toasting some friends on New Year’s Eve.”
Facing these recurring holiday seasons that for many of us actually start in August and don’t end until January can be petrifying. I have literally felt like I was in a war zone (all due respect to our Military whom I have not served during my lifetime) trying to dodge certain people, conversations and praying this won’t be one of those cocktail parties where I drink too much to escape the pain, or throw up in the bathroom in the midst of a teary panic attack.
By the time we get to November of any given year, I have already been in the “holiday” season for two months starting with school busses and back to school nights, trying to move along through the sludge as I am reminded with each breath that my children aren’t coming back. It is exhausting.
But understanding this dynamic instead of bracing against it, and trying to out run it, makes room for us to better plan and make decisions about how this time will be spent. For example, our family values experience over gift giving, so we let ourselves off the “shopping” hook and plan an event that we can all enjoy, like a sunset cruise or dinner by the water. I plan special meditations, do yoga and lay off substances that make me nuts like alcohol and sugar.
I am human, so I fall short about as much as I show up for myself. But it’s the refusal to completely give up that I am most proud of. I just can’t do it. After all the pain, tears, lost dreams and excruciating memories of not being about to protect let alone save Alexis and Emmanuel from dying, there is still some cell in my body, some whisper, a question mark even, that is just enough to keep me showing up for the holidays. When I can. And when I can’t. I don’t. And that’s ok too.
Best tips for a smooth-ish holiday season when you are in deep grief: Self Care, Self Care, Self Care and yes, you guessed it more Self Care. Shoot me a note or schedule some time with me through the Collaboration page. I can share some strategies and hopefully learn some of yours.