The Presence of Absence at Christmas ...

I notice your absence.

I notice your non-presence and reflect

on the time when you were present ...

Jarod Kintz

Hello everyone,

I've just finished all the happy "work" of the holidays and now there is time to sit back by the fire with a cup of tea to reflect on the holiday experience thus far. 

The winter holidays are usually the most joyful time of year for me. I love everything about them - the lights, the colours, the gifts, the music, the connection with family and friends. This year, however, changes in the pattern of life have subdued some of that joy. One sister, who lost her partner last spring, is grieving. The other sister is far away in Dawson City, without her family, working through the holidays. My dear friends, whose daughter is spending Christmas in a hotel room in a small city in Borneo rather than joining them for Christmas dinner, are missing her presence. And my own traditional plans for Christmas Day have taken a different path this year, asking me to spend most of Christmas Day alone.

At one point during the week, I sat down with my journal to better understand the strength of my emotional response to these "absences". I was sad and angry and lonely to a degree that seemed a bit of an overreaction to the actual circumstances. (After all, I am hardly a Syrian refugee being torn from everything I know or a family caregiver saying goodbye to a loved one who will die over the holidays.) As usual, after digging a little deeper, I realized that the intensity of my response came from layers of similar experiences in times past, times when the presence of absence figured strongly in my life. 

Whether at the very beginning of life when I lived as a boarder baby in a hospital nursery or during the many times in my childhood when my beloved father disappeared without warning on an alcoholic binge or throughout the early years of my bereavement following the deaths of my husband and mother, this "presence of absence" has had a strong, if sometimes unconscious, effect on my life. Now, when current holiday experiences trigger the emotional memories of these absences, my old and new reactions can mix together and become a little over-the-top.  

It is in the nature of life that we live in the presence of absence. Something or someone is almost always missing or about to go missing. Most of us build up an internal file folder of "absence experiences" over time, a folder that has the potential to raise our emotional intensity whenever it is reopened by a current loss or disappointment. 

So, what do we to do when this file folder is opened unexpectedly and all those old pages of absence fall out on the floor with their attendant emotions?

The first step is to recognize that this, indeed, is what's happening. This recognition lets us separate present experience from past emotion, allowing us to respond to the current absence with more appropriate intensity.

Secondly, we can reach out for a "presence" to calm and balance the experience of absence. Tell a trusted friend how you're feeling, write in your journal, pray, meditate, lean into the web connecting all human beings for support and comfort.

Thirdly, make a concrete action plan for doing the best you can with the absence situation that faces you. I have a large turkey thigh in the fridge waiting to be stuffed tomorrow morning, a fire all ready to be laid in the fireplace and a new book on hand to open tomorrow afternoon. I've also booked telephone visits with particularly supportive loved ones, spread throughout the day. It won't be the Christmas I want but it can be a better one than the lonely one I'd imagined.

And, finally, after the holidays have passed, you can consider seeing a good therapist to work at emptying your absence file folder of some of its older pages so that your holiday emotions can gradually become less overwhelming.

Whatever the absences present in your life this holiday season, may each of you find sufficient gifts of peace and joy to balance them. 

  

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Jan

When Christmas Hurts...

I think there must be something wrong with me,

Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I

don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel.

Charlie Brown

Hello, everyone,

Today has been a wonderful day of trimming the Christmas tree, decorating the house and baking the world's best ginger snaps (if I do say so myself!). These winter holidays are my favourite. I love the cold air and sparkling lights outside and the fire and coziness inside, the sounds of carols in the air and the visits of beloved family and friends.

However, for many, the holidays are not such a happy time. This week, for example, three of my friends and family are having serious surgery, one on Monday, one on Tuesday and the third on Wednesday. They and their families are stressed and worried.

When illness, trauma, loss, worry or chronic sorrow fill your heart, the light celebrations of Christmas and the other seasonal holidays can ring hollowly at best or sound a note of pure pain at worst. One of the hardest things about this kind of holiday suffering is that no one wants you to feel it - so family and friends do their best to "cheer you up". It's such a relief when the rare person comes along who will allow you feel exactly as you do without having to "fix"you. Such people are worth their weight in gold.

While checking in with a few of my favourite websites this week, I came across a young woman who, through her music, encourages others to feel their grief and sadness. Her name is Latifah Phillips of Page CXVI and she takes traditional hymns and spiritual songs and changes their words and arrangements to make them more relevant for today. Recently, she took a popular Christian children's song, "Down in My Heart", a typically "go-ey" tune as my husband used to say, and reinterpreted it as a melancholy reflection of pain and grief, written in a minor key.

The dissonance of the song's usual cheer and her own sad arrangement seems to bother her a little for she adds a new refrain:

I can't understand
And I can't pretend
That this will be alright in the end. 

But then she goes on to end the song with a verse from the old hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul", a song of acceptance and trust in the face of suffering. She seems to be saying that even in the midst of great pain we can still find joy. And even when we can't seem to find anything to hope for, we can anticipate that peace will come eventually.

So, I invite you to take a listen and allow this new song, Joy, to companion you through whatever sadness is present this winter season, whether it is the pain of secondary traumatic stress, the grief of losing a family member or friend, or the chronic sorrow of living with a loved one's unending illness or injury. (It's not particularly my style of music - I'm more a Mozart, Schubert or Abba type - but I like Latifah's idea of juxtaposing the happiness of the season with many people's true emotions.) May having your sadness acknowledged in a musical way bring you some peace.

15 Simple Suggestions for A December Grief ...

The holidays?

Most of us grievers

would just as soon be sick through 

the whole shebang!

Meg Woodson

Whether you are a family caregiver coping with episodes of holiday-triggered chronic sorrow or a helping professional deep-sixing accumulated grief after a series of workplace deaths or a bereaved former caregiver facing your first aching holiday season without your partner, friend, parent or child, a December grief can be a cold and unwelcome experience. How does one grieve in a world alight with joy and anticipation?

There are only individual answers to this question but it may help to hear some of the suggestions penned and spoken by those who have walked the path of holiday grief before you:

1. Don't let anyone take your grief away. It is yours, your pathway to healing, and you need it to knit together the pieces of your broken life.

2.  It's your holiday and you can cry if you want to. Crying alone or with loved ones can be deeply healing and will ease the stress of holding back the tears. If you want to cry and find that you can't, try using a movie, poem, story or piece of music that has triggered your tears in the past.  

3.  Count on having an imperfect holiday. It removes the pressure and you won't be disappointed through having unrealistic expectations.

4.  Listen to your body as you make your plans. If a proposed plan makes you clench and causes your heart to race, don't follow it.

5.  Choose the aspects of the holidays that you find most comforting - the card writing, the baking, the religious rituals, the lights and decorations, the music, the entertaining, spending time with children, phoning old friends, attending plays or concerts, taking a vacation. Focus on those parts and leave the rest for next year. If nothing appeals and you just want to go to bed and cover your head with a comforter, that's fine too.

6.  Beware the unconscious numbing of painful feelings through compulsively eating holiday sweets, drinking alcohol, taking prescription drugs, over-exercising, over-spending, surfing the internet, and other "socially acceptable" practices. They may help the pain in the short term but they will complicate your grief over the long haul.

7.  The holidays are full of activities and invitations. Your first response may be, "I can't do this." Consider trying. Stay only as long as you're comfortable. Arrive late, leave early. Tell your hosts that you won't know how you will feel until the time comes and excuse yourself in advance for leaving early or not arriving at all.

8.  Create space to be alone. Leave time to be alone to absorb your feelings. You can use times of solitude to allow memories, both good and bad, to surface. It is also a good time for self-care. You may find you need more rest than you do normally. 

9.  Buy and wrap a gift to place under the tree to replace the one your loved one would have given you. (Or ask a friend to do your ill loved one's shopping.) It won't be the same, but it may help to fill the gap.

10.  When you're out and about, carry a list of phone numbers of close friends and family members you can trust to be understanding and supportive. Call one of them if you find that your grief has been triggered by reminders of life before the illness or the death. If you can't reach the first person you call, call the next one on the list and continue until you find someone who will give you a kindly ear and a telephone hug.

11.  Spend time with other grievers who understand your situation. It can help to be with others who understand without much explanation.

12.  Consider attending a "Blue Christmas" or similar service during the weeks before the holiday. (They're usually listed in your neighbourhood newspaper or on the Internet.) 

These services for people who are sad at the holidays are usually small, quiet, candle-lit gatherings with sensitive readings, soft music and reflective addresses designed to help you grieve as others celebrate. They are generally arranged so that you can stay for a cup of tea and support afterwards or slip away into the night.

13.  Journal your grief, your anger and your gratitude. The holidays tend to offer many opportunities to bite your tongue as people make inept attempts to comfort you. It's better to write your feelings in your journal than to act them out in the moment. 

Over time, your journal writings can also help to balance your remembrance of life before the illness or before your loved one's death. (Many of us pine for an idealized past that never actually existed.) Date your entries so you can look back and track your experience over time.

14.  Visit the cemetery or scattering ground. There is nothing morbid about visiting a loved one's grave. You might want to ask someone to drive you there but not visit the grave with you or you might want to go alone and then visit with a supportive friend afterward. 

You could take a wreath, fresh flowers, or a candle to decorate the grave. (And, perhaps, an unremembered grave of someone unknown to you.) You could also read a favourite passage, say a prayer, share your holiday plans, or just sit and share the silence. (Take a warm rug or a hot water bottle to hold if you want to sit awhile.)

15.  Ease the work of the holidays.  Be careful not to overwork. Pay someone to clean your house or ask several family members and friends to help with an hour-long cleaning blitz. Use wreaths and greenery to decorate your home instead of putting up a tree. Cut back decorations to a few favourites. Buy your baking. Draw for family gifts. Shop using the Internet or catalogues. Give gift certificates. Have a pot-luck holiday dinner, order in, or go out for a meal - or just gather for dessert and coffee at someone else's house.

 Whatever your final plans, may each of you who grieves this holiday season find love and comfort in the warm embrace of family and friends.