A few days ago I was interviewed on local Catholic radio about loss and grief, my stories and relationships with my family and friends who have died, and how my faith figured into the journey.
One of the questions I was asked was whether I had any advice about handling the holidays. As you may know I lost my first husband in a car accident 25 years ago. Then, between 2012 and 2015 we lost four family members, all tragically. My second husband we lost to brain cancer. Six months later my mom, only 63, died of a combination of things; COPD, Lymphoma, untreated Lyme’s disease and dementia. My brother committed suicide in 2015 and my step dad died in a house fire four months later. These were the people we usually spent the holidays with.
Honestly we haven’t done well with holidays at all since all that, especially without my mom, the holiday queen (or shall we say dictator). We hardly ever had to do anything except bring a thing or two and stay out of her way, being unquestioningly obedient and obsequious to her requirements of us. These included No (more) practical jokes (that had been a major coup attempt to take over her iron fisted rule over the holidays) no disorder or chaos of any kind, and everyone cooperate peacefully and sing Christmas Carols whether we liked it or not.
We missed all of that after her death. We would never be able to cook like that (and for DAYS), set a beautiful Fiesta ware table like that, make flower arrangements ourselves from our own garden or provide the atmosphere she did. We would never do two Christmas trees; one artistic and one victorian style in different parts of the house, or line the sidewalk with luminares, or cover everything with color themed lights, or wrap the presents in themed artistically matching colors. Or be her. We could never be her. Nobody could. And nobody Could read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas like her. It only made us sad.
So that first Thanksgiving without her we did something completely different. We had a chaotic Thanksgiving pot luck at my step brother’s house. It was loud with football on the TV the whole time and music playing and people in the band room banging the drums and everybody talking in every room. Lots of people people people.
My step brother has become more of a recluse since then. We don’t see much of him though there is no ill will and only deep affection between us. We keep in touch.
So pretty much we didn’t really do Thanksgiving. I mean not really. Sometimes we did very little and it depressed everyone even more. Other times we did nothing. It would just be my daughters and me and the babies.
At Christmas we did what we needed to do for the three kids but everyone kept it as simple and quiet as possible. It was hard not to get depressed. We usually did get depressed. I truly longed for Christmas to just be a religious feast day instead of all the other stuff on top of that.
Eventually we began to bring back some traditions we missed, like going around the table doing “wishes and gratefuls” on Thanksgiving. You say three things you are grateful for about the year. Then you wish the person sitting next to
you a year of whatever you see them needing or wanting. We brought that back. The kids come up with some pretty sweet and funny things to say too.
We brought back our old household tradition of leaving Santa cigarettes and beer on Christmas Eve. We know from experience that is what St. Nicholas is into. He left cigarette buts and beer cans all over the yard that time he set up a trampoline for the girls all those years ago. So we give him what he really wants.
But THIS year for the first time I am truly excited about the holidays. Because THIS year we have a HOUSE to have these events in! Our own HOUSE again. We have room for sitting at the table, to invite friends too, room in the kitchen for my daughters and I to cook together, a yard for the kids to play in. We don’t understand football at all but I want to put it on anyway. It will remind us of our men and we will just be comforted by it, not, I am hoping, sad. I think we may even be happy.
All of my mom’s Fiesta ware except a tea cup and a salt shaker were destroyed in the fire but I have been building a new collection. And we have SO much to be grateful for!
I plan to introduce some new traditions as well. We plan to light candles on the table for each of our beloved dead. Also when the girls were little we had poetry night and A.A. Milne night. On A.A. Milne night we would take turns reading from The World of Pooh and laugh and laugh. That stuff is hilarious. We continued that into their teens and laughed just as much.
And poetry night we could read one of our own poems or someone else’s we admired. We used to have a lot of fun with that.
We used to break into a family dance sometimes after dinner.
I’m thinking we could read aloud from The World of Pooh after Thanksgiving Dinner and then have a family dance.
On Christmas Eve last year I got the kids to memorize a poem each. It turned out really funny. (Especially the Shell Silverstein ones). I should start working with them earlier this time. But we can have poetry night again this Christmas. We will all do a poem!
There is even a yard for the kids to play in afterwards. I think it will be good.
Mom’s house was always filled with cigarette smoke on holidays because so many of us smoked. None of the smokers are with us anymore. But maybe we will light one up just to recreate the ambience.
I almost forgot we have a fire pit. So we can have a fire and my youngest can play guitar and we can sing our family song, Wish You Weāre Here by Pink Floyd. š
And any time my daughters and I are together we end up telling stories about the people we miss and what they used to do or say back then. We still miss them. But mostly we laugh.
And anyway, we know they are still here. They are probably laughing too. Even Mom. š
Bethany Hang Out 