It took a while, but the holiday blues have finally caught up with me.
Thanksgiving was OK, and I was actually beginning to think the whole season would be easy like that.
But this past week was just one ton of bricks after another.
I feel like pretending the holidays just aren't happening.
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Death at the holidays has a way of casting its shadow over the holiday season for the rest of a person's life.
My mom did not die at Xmas time but she loved Christmas so much that the season brings many memories of her, some of which still hurt a great deal.
I have regrets about how I spent her last Christmas--running around and shopping for trinkets when the only gift she really wanted was just for me to sit and read to her.
I have a lot of regrets about how I treated her during my Christmas visits in my 20s and 30s. Like I couldn't wait to get away and back to my real life. When she had waited all year just to see me for those few days. I complained about all the food she forced on me, when those were her only days to cook for me, to have meals at the same table with me, instead of just eating alone and imagining what I was doing at that same moment, far far away. I complained how she patted on me and poked at me and picked lint off me, when she only got to touch me for those few days. And then I was gone for another whole year! God I cry every time I think of it. I was punishing her! I wish I hadn't! I'm so sorry, mommy! If there is any way for you to reach across the great divide and forgive me, I really need your forgiveness!
These last few days I have had occasion to talk to several people whose holiday grief is much more pronounced than mine. One friend who is spending her first Christmas without her husband of 50+ years. She's been weepy ever since Halloween. Another friend whose mother was just diagnosed with inoperable cancer--no happy Christmas for that family this year. And another woman who has refused to celebrate Christmas ever since her only daughter died 12 Decembers ago.
I am tenderhearted and other people's pain affects me deeply. So being surrounded by a lot of holiday sadness makes it even harder for me to let the happy holiday joy come in.
And maybe that is OK.
There is no point in forcing myself to get into a holiday spirit I don't really feel. That helps no one. It certainly doesn't help me. Faking it is not my way of doing things.
Frankly, not trying to hide my holiday blues causes other people who feel the same way to open up to me. Maybe that is what has been going on this past week. My solemnity has led others to share their stories. They can sense that I am not in the swing of things either. They can tell I will be a kindred spirit and will not say anything that implies they should snap out of it.
I do know some people who are expecting more holiday joy than usual. A couple with a newborn baby boy--they are over the moon ecstatic. A family member is recovering well from serious surgery--he is just happy to be alive and able to move around without pain.
How are you dealing with the swirl of holiday happiness in the air?
Does it annoy you? I have already had more than my quota of Jingle Bell Rock for the season and it is only December 9th. I feel like avoiding all retail establishments for the next two weeks.
Do you ignore it? I just don't walk down the aisles with the seasonal displays. I don't look in the windows with the animated holiday scenes. I have no decorations in my apartment or in my office. I'm just trying to get through with as little exposure to it as possible.
Does it make you angry? Are you envious of people who are anticipating happy holidays? My eyes fill with tears as I think of all the people who are joyfully planning parties and traveling to see relatives and looking forward to surprises under the tree.
I haven't decided whether to buy a tree.
From a religious point of view, there is a lot of solemnity to Advent, so I am taking the quiet and the contemplative approach to the pre-Christmas period. I'm not rejecting the holiday as a means of rejecting Christianity--it's still "my holiday". But I am entering more into the holy mystery, which is midnight, and starlight, and no room at the inn. So many of the great Christmas carols are actually quite melancholy.
Are you keeping the holiday blues at bay? Does holiday happiness all around make grief worse, or can you just block it all out?
Or does the holiday cheer lift your spirits? Is it an opportunity to set grief aside and be swept away by the seasonal joy?
I'm counting the days until January 2 when all this will be over and the expectations that I should put on a happy face will go away for another 11 months.