A Long December
Welcome to December.
I’m wondering how the first of the holiday’s went for everyone. This isn’t always a magical time of the year for some. There’s stuff we have to deal with that we were able to successfully avoid throughout the year. Or there’s stuff that comes up only this time of year. Or maybe there’s no stuff at all because you are alone, which is it’s own kind of stuff.
I have some not great stuff come up for me in December. Sometime around the first week I find myself abruptly feeling sad. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise as it’s been 21 since that phone call with my Dad when he didn’t know who I was. I was sitting in my car in the YMCA parking lot when the sheer force of my imminent future loss hit me. I was in RI and my Dad was in Florida and I wasn’t able to be there because I had a fee for service job and four kids to support. No work=no pay. The three months between my Dad being diagnosed with cancer, again, and this call, went by way too fast, and there we were, with him not oriented to time, person, or place, because of the cancer.
I never made it back to see him conscious again. By the time I got the call, they were bringing hospice into the home. It was two weeks after the parking lot call, and three days before New Years. I made it to Florida then and sat beside him for those last three days, angry that they put him in a drug induced coma to make him “comfortable”, when what I needed was him awake. Needless to say the span between that first phone call and New Years Day, are hard weeks for me now as all these events come back to the surface.
It took me a while to learn that anniversaries are not exclusive to the days we celebrate. Anniversaries can be a season, a color, a scent, a food, and yes, a date on the calendar. It’s much easier to steel yourself for the calendar dates because you know they are coming. It’s the other things that insidiously sneak up on you and make your partner ask you if you are okay, or why are you being so mean. It’s the way your brain said on that day, THIS IS TRAUMATIC, and do not forget a second of this moment so we can always be on alert to avoid this happening again. But my brain can’t stop December from happening again, nor New Years eve/day.
There are things that December brings to celebrate and that make me happy. My youngest daughter was born in December, I get all the peppermint chocolate I want in December, and the most special day happens in December, the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus. These are exceptional things to celebrate, but they always have a pallor cast over them as my brain wants to remind me of my loss. So I honor the loss by being thankful for the 39 years I gained before those days happened. It is not easy but when I can acknowledge to myself there is pain there and I need to be gentle with myself, it gives me room for the joy to join us. I can be both things at the same time, leaving me mostly to feel bittersweet in the melding of the two. My Dad deserves to be remembered, even the days I wish never happened, because it is his life and his story. I can’t take that away from him, and I don’t want to anymore.
I know you have your own grief this time of year. There are so many well intended messages telling us we are not alone. This frustrates me sometimes because if I am literally alone, that message isn’t correct. I want to add to that message by saying you are not alone in feeling grief, and there are ways to share it with others, even if it’s in an online community. You can tell us here, or reach out below if you need more. Honor whatever it is you have lost by allowing for the bittersweet, and your brain will create new meaning for those anniversaries.
“And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe,
Maybe this year will be better than the last.
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself,
To hold on to these moments as they pass”Counting Crows
Happy December Friends,
Elisha