Tuesday's Trust - 'Tis the Optional Season!

Tuesday's Trust

'Tis the Optional Season!

For the past two years, we have not "done" Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is now just three weeks away. From this distance, we are thinking maybe we can have the family over again (just our little family - our son Nathan, our son Rollin, his wife/our daughter-in-law Stephanie, and their baby/our new grand baby Ellie). But then again, we pause, and question ourselves…

Are we lying to ourselves???

What can and can't we do these days?

How different are we?

One hazard for me is having to celebrate the holiday at a certain given time, and I have no idea how I am going to be at that given time. Putting holiday pressure on myself (on top of my-already-demanding-grief) feels claustrophobic -- nowhere to run, nowhere to hide if all expectations are there to "perform."

There are cultural expectations for the holiday. There are familial expectations for the holiday, so there is some level of anxiety beginning to creep in. Early on in our grief, we didn't think in terms of options as we do now. We just felt we had to "celebrate." Now we give ourselves room to have "options"!

Otherwise, it seems like a "holiday" could easily turn into a "get-through-it" day.

So a day that should be "special" for the intended sweetness entailed in it, could become more like a "going through the motions" day, just trying to keep our deep sorrow at bay…

Last year, my family-of-origin down in Georgia had a combination Thanksgiving Dinner AND Birthday Celebration for my precious mother. I knew I could not do that get-together because a large crowd of family is too overwhelming for my system now. But it made the holiday especially sad because I couldn't be with my mother to celebrate a special time with her. (What was great though was, as it turned out, my 97-year-old mother didn't even want to go!!!)

(I wish just my mother and I could have gotten together. That was our style when I went home to visit -- just she and I would spend time together, maybe one brother and his wife would come over for a little while, but most of the time, it was the two of us (and one of her helpers). We would have the best times together. Quality time. Relaxed. Unhurried. Special. Often we would laugh together. And often, we would cry together. (We were both child-loss parents, so we had that in common; we each "got it.") So sweet.

But, I digress… So as of right now, I have no idea what we'll do.

But I do hope for some sort of sweet quality fellowship with my precious "little" family.

We'll take it one step at a time and trust that the best solution surfaces . . .

What about you?

What are your holiday plans so far?

(There is a sweet story about holidays and loss that goes with today's picture; you might want to check it out at the following blog site:)

Picture: http://relayforlifeoflaketravis.blogspot.com/2006/04/empty-table.html

Wednesday's Woe - "Backwards Land": What to Do with Holidays?

Wednesday's Woe

"Backwards Land":

What to Do with Holidays?

~Tommy and Angie Prince

When our children were little, we played a game with them we called "Backwards Land." Up was down. Down was up. Right was left. Left was right. So occasionally, when our children would come up for supper time, enter the kitchen, and sit down at the table, Daddy (Tommy) would announce, "You have now entered Backwards Land!" The first time this happened, they looked on the table and saw breakfast served instead of supper. In "Backwards Land," they had to walk backwards. They had to talk backwards. For example, they would say "Isn't that a beautiful sunrise today?" when it was pitch-black outside, etc. And so, for the rest of dinner/oops, breakfast, we would play "Backwards Land."

"Backwards Land" was a fun thing to do from time to time. It was a fun time for the kids, and a sweet time for us to watch their creative brains working overtime.

But now? As bereaved parents, we seemingly are living in our own permanent "Backwards Land," where what was once fun and festive is now painful and gloomy.

It seems now holidays have become the worst days instead of the best days for us.

Fortunately, our own surviving children are quite familiar with the new rules by which we must live, and respect those uncomfortable situations that may arise for us and how me must choose to cope with them. They know "Backwards Land," and they understand why Mommy and Daddy must live there for now.

The problem is nobody else around us seems to know the new rules-by-which-we-now-are-needing-to-live though we have repeated them over and over. (Perhaps that is part of living in Backwards Land too - We speak, but nobody seems to hear us!) And that conundrum of folks not accepting the needed-changes-we-must-make-in-order-for-us-to-be-able-to-cope-with-our-child's-death makes for some awkward relationship adjustments.

But you know what, they will just have to "Deal!" ~ Or, as the folks in AA who also have to make major life changes for healthy adjustments to their new life would say so simply,

"It is what it is."

*****

The worst days now are holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter..., birthdays, weddings, (December) 31st--days meant as festivals of happiness and joy now are days of tears.

The gap is too great between day and heart. Days of routine I can manage; no songs are expected. But how am I to sing in this desolate land, when there's always one too few?

~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

There are no rules governing grieving.

Each individual and family have to work out their way to get through it.

That process of finding a route that has the fewest emotional potholes is what constitutes the ongoing grief-work.

The family needs to find routes for itself. Any attempts from outsiders to impose rules rankles.

How can anyone recommend a detour around an obstacle if they have never been down that path?

In any case, suggesting rules heaps guilt and doubt on the shoulders of people who truly don't need any.

~Judith Bernstein, When the Bough Breaks Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter

*****

Right now, Tommy and I don't "do" crowds. But that's okay. I may not go "home" for the holidays, but I do go home to see my mother and I get to spend one-on-one quality time together with her, and it is incredibly sweet for us both.

...Sometimes "Backwards Land" is not really all that "backwards" after all!

Picture - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1257869/Upside-house-opened-visitors--just-dont-use-toilet.html