Holidays 2020: A dance of grief and grace

Posted On December 26, 2020

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, my family got a double kick in the teeth with the death of my uncle, followed a few days later by my aunt –  same side of the family, different branch.  In the span of a week, my mother’s oldest sister had lost her husband as a result of a long illness, and her younger sister to a too fast and unexplained health event.  All this, not far from the anniversary of her youngest daughter’s death.

As I battled my own grief, I watched in amazement as she handled all of this with more grace than I thought humanly possible. 

I am terrible at grief.  I ricochet through the stages, definitely most comfortable with the rage and demanding reasons. I want to break it down, make it make logical sense and then, maybe, I’ll dable with acceptance. Most likely I will simply slam the door on that place of grief in my mind, throw myself into whatever tasks I can find, and then wonder why I feel off or numb. 

With my aunt dying three days before Christmas, I shelved my rage and tried to give my son as great a pandemic Christmas as I could muster.  We delivered gifts, visited what family we could safely, and hunkered down on Christmas Eve, so very ready for a wonderful family Christmas. 

I woke up at 3:45 on Christmas morning in the pitch black.  The wind had taken the power out. We had filled the house with lights this year only to have them all go out. 

On top of weeks of swallowed grief, this felt like a body blow. I thought of how much I loved seeing my son’s face lit up by the light of the tree, shining with wonder. I thought of the smell of warm coffee and cinnamon rolls, our Christmas morning tradition. I was crushed and furious that all this too had been taken from me this year. How many more years of Christmas mornings like that did we even have left,  where it was all pure magic for my son? I started tracking the storm, checking the outage updates, busying myself with futility. 

And just as suddenly I stopped. I closed my eyes and took a few minutes to just feel. I took a long hard look at how bruised and tired the last few weeks had left me. I felt the ache, the frustration, the disappointment, and instead of running to anger and justification or shoving the feelings aside, I just leaned into them. I lay there for a while, mourning everything this season and this year had taken from us. I didn’t try to figure out why, I didn’t worry about what would come next in this crazy chaos. I let my feelings be what they were, without judgment. 

Then I got up, and, quietly as I could, built a fire in the woodstove. I got hot water going for coffee, prepared cinnamon rolls to go in the coals when the fire was ready, lit candles around the living room, filled the lower branches of our seventeen-foot tree with electric tea lights, and dozed on the couch nursing my bruised soul and resting until it was time to wake my guys. 

I woke my son by lantern light, and his face at the sight of the tree, the glow of the fire and candles, was pure magic. Somehow, the different ambience slowed the morning down for us.  Instead of tearing through the packages, we took them one at a time, talking, playing, being so very much in the moment that I burned the first batch of cinnamon rolls to hockey pucks. The second round was pure deliciousness- even with the little bit of ash that snuck into the pan. At the end of the day, I heard him tell my sister-in-law on Facetime that this was the best Christmas we had ever had. 

There were moments in the day where the beauty and joy collided painfully with my bruised heart.  Instead of judging and berating myself, I accepted that both emotions could coexist – that they were equally true and equally worthy of my attention. 

I thought of my aunt who had just passed. She met life with a lot of fire and fight, and I’m often told how like her I am. I cherish that part of her and of myself – it’s served me well in my life.

I thought of my other aunt, my mother’s oldest sister who has  lost so much, and still meets the world with such grace and gentleness. I think I’m starting to recognize her superpower – her ability to accept, lean into the moment, and allow herself to feel without judgement. I hope to find and nurture the parts of myself that are more like her. I hope I can teach my son the beauty and balance of that dance. It’s only when we let ourselves feel the pain that we can truly feel the joy. 

I know I’m not done grieving. None of us are – whether we’re mourning a loved one, our traditions, or our way of life. The turning of the year is not going to miraculously flip a switch on what we’ve lost or on further grief to come. We all need to process it in our own way, to find our way through. It’s not linear. Rage, denial, and depression may still sneak up on us without warning, even if we think we’ve already accepted. And that’s ok.  

It’s been a hell of a year. We need to let our hearts, minds, and bodies process that, both so we can fully experience the joys that life still offers, and so we can be ready to face whatever comes next.