November 2023
Each year the holidays come at me like a freight train. Around Thanksgiving I start hearing the train’s approach, off in the distance. I tell myself there’s time to get out of the way. And then the commercials start. The decorating begins. The travel planning commences. And pretty soon I realize that Christmas is less than two weeks away and then I just lie down on the tracks and let the train roll over me. With it comes fractured memories of holidays past and a new round of pain that is the constant reminder that another holiday without my parents has arrived.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy the holidays. I actually love them. But they do feel lonely. That is not meant to sound ungrateful. I am so blessed to have people who love me and want to be around me, to celebrate together. What they don’t understand is that although they too are my family, they still have each other. I am standing in the middle of the celebrations of a family that has their own shared history, and I am the only one who remembers the shared history of my own family…because I am the only one left.
Recently I have been listening to a podcast called “All There Is.” Anderson Cooper talks about his own losses and grief and talks to his guests about theirs. In one episode they were talking about the realization that you are the “last man standing.” That there’s no one to ask if a memory or story is accurate because the other people who experienced it with you are dead. There’s not many things lonelier than that.
When I start to feel that loneliness I look at this photo. It was taken a couple of weeks before my Dad died. He had been moved into hospice at a local nursing home, and he was fading fast. I had gone out to do an errand and when I returned there were my parents, looking at cards together. I remember standing in the doorway watching them and I took this picture to capture what I felt was the personification of love. The two of them huddled together, Mom helping Dad look at the cards he’d received….if I could attach an image to commitment and vows, this would be it.
My parents had their ups and downs, many challenges, but the one constant was love. To love this way requires a death to self. We have to die to what’s convenient, what’s easier, what we would rather be doing, what we feel we are missing out on, in order to love at this level. And when we love like this, we also grieve in a huge way. We can’t outrun the pain, because the love was part of us and now so is the grief. The actor Andrew Garfield said about the loss of his mother: “I hope this grief stays with me because it’s all of the unexpressed love that I didn’t get to tell her.”
The challenge here is to keep finding a way to live around the grief. For me, it’s showing up at the holidays rather than doing what would be easier for me (which is hide). When I show up, the people who love me are happy- they get to make memories with me that will last long after I am gone. I channel the grief into the love I have for others and that gives me the strength to experience joy despite the sadness. When my Mom showed up for Dad, over and over during their life together and at his death, she did so in spite of her sadness over his addiction and perhaps even over her desire for things to be different at times. And it was the same when Dad showed up for her, over and over. This picture, the embodiment of vows, of dying to ourselves to be love for others. There’s perhaps nothing more difficult, and also perhaps nothing that brings more joy.
I wish you joy this holiday season. As I used to say to a dear client and friend, “do what you can.” Just keep doing what you can, moment by moment. Peace be with you.
