Five Holiday Tips for Your Grief Journey

1. You do not have to do anything you don’t want to do.  Don’t feel pressured by your sense of duty to family and friends.  There are no “shoulds” or “musts” when you are on the path of your grief journey. Getting caught up in these absolutes will only make you miserable and others uncomfortable.

2.  Holidays are a rough time for anyone.  The expectations that we set for ourselves and the ones we perceive that others hold for us can be our undoing.  Practice the “KISS” philosophy—Keep it simple, sweetie.  It will save you the exhaustion and discomfort of trying to do more than you are able.

3. Do what you feel—if you can’t put up the decorations, don’t.  If you want to listen to sappy Holiday songs, do.  It’s time for self-care.  We have been programmed to think that caring for ourselves is selfish—it isn’t, it is essential to survival  and growth.  You can’t be there for others if you are not feeding your body and soul.

4. Don’t be surprised when everyone around you acts like nothing ever happened.  It is their inability to truly understand your pain that makes them act that way.  In addition they are uncomfortable with the whole concept of grief and sorrow so they will do whatever they can to ignore it, hoping it will go away.

5. The holiday season is supposed to be about love and happiness.  When you are in the midst of grief these things may seem  impossible.  If you are able, remember with love the happy times and holiday memories with your deceased loved one.  It’s ok to smile and cry at the same time.

The first Christmas after my son died I was pushed into attending a large family function held in a big public place.  I felt so out of place.  The noise and the amount of people were more than my raw emotions could take.  Needless to say, I didn’t stay long.  I recommend that you always have an escape route—what I mean by that is if you decide to go to a holiday gathering make sure that you can leave when/if it gets to feel overwhelming.

Take care of yourself and remember time moves forward minute by minute and the holidays will be over and things will return to a more even keel.  Also remember that you need to move forward step by step in your grief journey and only you know when to take those steps.

The Joy of Reading and Healing

I just finished reading a wonderful book by Will Schwalbe, titled “The End of Your Life Book Club.”  It is an amazing tribute to the love between a mother and son and their shared loved for books and reading.  It is a non-fictional account of the time Will and his mom spent together discussing books while waiting for her treatments for pancreatic cancer. 

Will’s parents had instilled an enormous love for reading in all their children but Will was able to use this activity to lead into conversations with his mom about her views, beliefs, and understanding of the world.  His mother was an amazing woman who had a passion for helping refugees in Afghanistan and around the world.

As I read the book I was touched by the relationship that Will and his mother had during this difficult time.  The books they read were secondary to their strength and courage facing this terminal illness.  However as I read the book I was quick to mark my choices of books for me to read—Will listed the titles of the books they read in the back of his book. 

Books offer so many different things to so many people.  I have always believed in the power of books and I believe that they can have a healing effect on people.  I read so many books on grief after the death of my son and mother.  Sometimes the books were the only thing that got me through the next day or the next hour.

My son, Robert, was an avid reader from the time he learned to read at three years old.  I loved the experience of sharing books from my childhood with him.  One of the books that we shared was “The Story of Ferdinand” written by Munro Leaf; illustrated by Robert Lawson.  I was happily surprised to see that this book had been a favorite of Will growing up.  As I think about the story of Ferdinand who would rather smell the flowers than fight in the ring it makes me smile.  It’s a great example of being in the moment—mindful of nothing but the big open field and the act of smelling one small flower.

I’d like to think that if Robert were still alive he and I would be sharing books. When I’m reading I imagine how he would react to a certain story line or character in the book I’m reading.  I know that he and I would have had lots of good conversations about “The End of Your Life Book Club.”

 

Mother's Day, again

Mother’s Day--I tell myself that it is a made-up holiday.  That it is just a way to sell cards, flowers, and help the restaurants make more money.  But—the build-up for Mother’s Day seems to be all around me.  It is in every advertisement I see for almost any product—“Buy your mom drain cleaner for Mother’s Day.  She will thank you.”  Okay, so maybe not, but it seems to be so prevalent.  With it goes my thoughts that I “use to be” a mother.  It was the best job I have ever had.  I took such pride in being a mom.  I only had one kid so I had to do it right the first time—and boy, I felt like I did.  Maybe I was too proud, maybe I bragged too much, maybe I shouldn’t have been so happy…

Now I only have the memories of being a mom and the knowledge that I will never hear that name used for me again.  I’m not someone’s mom, I won’t be someone’s mother-in-law, and I won’t be someone’s grandma.  So I have had to re-invent myself because for 24 years I had defined myself by that term-Mom.  When it was taken away from me I didn’t know who I was any longer.  Even when everything else in my life was a mess I still had that.  I tried to remember who the person was before I became a mom and it was impossible because I had been a mother, and I had lost a child, and it had forever changed me.  Then only eleven months after I lost one identity—that of mother—I lost another identity, daughter, when my mother died.  I was always very close to my mom, being the youngest child and the only girl.  I loved that my son had such a special relationship with my mom.  In less than a year they were both gone and I could no longer define myself as mother or daughter.  Who was I? Where was I?  I could not go back, I could only move forward.

Most of the time I am able to make the steps and move forward, but there are these little things, reminders of who I use to be, that all seem to happen for me around the same time.  These “anniversary reactions” pile up and I work harder at making the steps, one by one.  First in April was the anniversary of the crash, now May brings Mother’s Day, the beginning of next month is my son’s birthday.  Then for a while I will have some rest from these triggers.  When fall comes I begin new ones that carry over into the holidays.  It is the way my life is now and I mark the passage of time by these anniversaries and then take another step forward. 

The Tsunami of Grief

I just finished reading an amazing book called “Wave” written by Sonali Deraniyagala. It is the story of her escape from the Tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004, which also resulted in the death of both of her parents, her husband, and her two young sons.  It is also the story of her struggle with incredible grief– she talks about the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of her journey. Ultimately it is her telling of the seven year journey through her grief and how her life has changed in every aspect of her existence.

I found the book extremely raw and truthful in explaining the aftermath left for the grieving person to face in a world suddenly changed.  I also liked that Deraniyagala did not shy away from telling the negative and flawed ways she tried to deal with her grief in the early years.  I thought her story was compelling and I related to her feelings about no longer being a mother and how devastating and empty that can seem.

In her book Deraniyagala describes a time when she is on a plane with a woman who begins to ask her questions about her parents, is she married, does she have children?  Deraniyagala is not only annoyed by the stranger’s questions but also knows how devastating it would be to that person if she were to tell her the truth.  I understand that feeling. 

One time, a couple years after my son’s accident, I was visiting a quaint little store in my home town and the owner struck up a conversation with me because I was the only one in the store.  She asked if I had any children, and I hesitated, weighing whether or not to answer truthfully.  I don’t like the feeling of denying my truth so I explained to her that I had a son who had died in a plane crash.  She asked more questions about him and the crash and I answered her.  She began crying and now I was left with the task of comforting her and helping her to feel better.  As Deraniyagala writes, “I keep it under wraps because I don’t want to shock or make anyone distressed.”  It seems that it is a constant juggling act to decide when and to whom to tell my story even after all this time.

I also appreciated how Deraniyagala explained her life seven years after her loss.  She noted that she no longer felt the shock but she felt fully the absence of her family and her life as it would be now with them in it.  Deraniyagala stated that she realized that she was only able to be herself and live her life if she held her sons and husband close to her.  When she tried to distance herself from them and the loss then that was when she felt unsteady.  I have found that true in my journey also.  In the beginning years the shock would not allow me to feel my son’s loss completely but now I am able to embrace my son and his memory. 

It also was refreshing that her book did not end with her “new” life tied up neatly in a bow.  Although she is successful in her work and appears to have a good support system of friends and family she does not allude to having built a new family or home to take the place of the one she lost.  She leaves the reader with the understanding that she continues to feel the loss while she continues to move through her life.  I liked that.  It felt real and doesn’t give other grievers false hope or the worry of comparison of their lives as being “less than” and the worry that “I’m not grieving correctly or I would be…”  We all travel our own path; none is better or “more right.”  Deraniyagala seems to get that.

Grief Journey--Then and Now

I have been so busy lately and focused on the practicum (pre-internship) for my Master’s in Mental Health degree.  I have begun the real work in the real world of counseling and it has been taking my time during the day working with clients and the evenings researching my work.  Because of this I have been neglecting the blog.  I have thought of it daily and regretted not being able to give it the attention it deserved.

As I was thinking about my life now having finally finished all my coursework, and I am now actually working as an intern in my field, I marveled at how much things have changed in the seven years since my world was turned upside down.  I wonder sometimes if my son would recognize the person that I have become.  His untimely death, followed by the death of my mother changed me profoundly in every way—physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Their deaths and the grief journey that followed shook my foundation apart and eventually I began building a new foundation, a different foundation based on what I had learned from this journey.

In those early stages of grief I never thought I would function again, have a life or a future.  I felt as if my life had ended that April day when my son died.  Shortly after I started seeing a grief counselor she recommended the movie, “Four Weddings and  a Funeral.”  I reluctantly watched the movie, not really able to concentrate, but I was struck by the poem read at one of the funerals.  It fully captured how I felt at that time.  I wanted everything to stop—for me, my world had stopped and I couldn’t understand how the Earth could continue to rotate on its axis. I would never have been able to tell that “me” who was so caught up in grief that  this “me” would come to a point in time that I was so busy with life that I would find that I was juggling to find time to do everything I want to do.  The journey continues, there are moments when the grief takes my breath away, but I move forward.

An interesting side note about the author of the poem, W.H. Auden wrote Opera librettos and the second version of the poem with the added stanzas was written to be sung by a soprano set to music of Benjamin Britten.  My son, Robert would be pleased about the opera connection.
I am sharing this poem with you below:

Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Remembering My Mother

Today is my mother's birthday.  She would have been 95 years old.  She died ten days after her 89th birthday while in hospice.  I miss her gentleness and love. She and I would talk on the phone almost every day until my son died eleven months prior to my mother's death. 

When my son died my mother felt like she was losing her only daughter in addition to her youngest grandchild.  She was desperate to make me “better.”  Whenever I would call her she would ask me how I was feeling and that would lead me to tell her the truth, I was feeling rotten.  She couldn’t accept this and would tell me that I needed to get through this because she needed me.  It became more difficult for me to talk to her because of these exchanges and I began to call her less often and distanced myself from her as I suffered from the severe grief of losing my only child.

My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the beginning of 2007, just months after my son’s death.  I felt like I had not been doing my job of taking care of her like I always had---taking her to the doctor and making sure she had the things she needed.  I had given over these duties to my brother and his wife because I was just too exhausted from my grief and didn’t feel like I could handle any additional stress.  When I found out that my mom was terminal I took over and made sure that she was comfortable at the hospital and then eventually in hospice.

I stayed with her most of the time and we talked, laughed, and cried.  I would take in photo albums; we would look at the pictures and tell stories of our family and of course memories of my son.  At one point I was sitting in my mom’s bed with her and she told me this was just what she had wanted—for us to be together and talking like old times.  I was so happy that I was able to be there for her and for me.

Her death taught me what a “good” death was like.  She had lived a long life and she was ready to transition to the next phase.  She was able to have a gentle death and we were then able to give her a well-planned and loving memorial service. 

Although I miss her in my life, I am so grateful to have had the honor to be there to help her when she was facing death.  It showed me that death can be a welcomed event for the dying and that it is a privilege to be able to assist someone in his or her journey.

I love you Mom.