Ho Ho Horrible

'Tis the season to be jolly.  It's the holiday season.  Everyone is supposed to rush around with a smile on their face, right?  The colors seem brighter, happier.  Unless you've had a loss that drains all color and turns the light to darkness.  Then it all seems to be washed in particularly painful shades of gray fading to black.  The holidays are anything but happy for those in mourning. 

People's expectations that you have happy holidays makes this time a year more painful for many people.  It's hard to feel thankful at Thanksgiving when all you feel is the black hole of where your loved one ought to be.  2010, the year I lost my baby, all I could feel was that black hole, that bloody hole where my heart used to be, sucking all light, all color, all flavor out of the world.  It's hard to taste turkey and pie around the flavor of blood that tints everything.

Those who haven't had that world-rocking, earth-shattering caliber of loss simply don't understand how this works.  Your struggle with the holiday confuses them many times.  It seems like your failure somehow that you haven't "gotten over it" yet.  Some people outside the miasma of your loss  try to understand.  Some have gone through it and really do understand.  But so many don't.  And their expectations for your joy feel like that one more burden you can't carry. 

I've seen it again and again.  My husband lost his mother just over 20 years ago on the 16th of December.  For him, she was Christmas.  To this day, every Christmas feels like a soul-sucker.  He struggles to find things to be grateful for since his holidays have been buried in the cold ground for over two decades.  He loves us, but that doesn't stop his clinical depression that gets worse in the dim, short days from feeling all the more acute during "the most wonderful time of the year."  I've talked to multiple people this year who feel the same about the holidays as we did and, to some extent, still do.

Neither my husband or I felt even sort of merry December 2010.  Every song about babies or birthing brought burning tears to my eyes.  Since then, I've been clawing my way back through finding ways to serve others for myself and my family and then putting slips of paper with acts of service printed on them into a jar for my angel.  These are to be opened and read on Christmas morning.  My holidays do almost feel merry again these seven years later.  But my husband still feels the darkness in a way that overshadows everything else.  I respect that. 

There's no easy fix for this.  The holidays just make everything feel harder, more burdensome, for many people.  All many of those who are in mourning ask is that they be allowed to mourn and feel in their own way, in their own time.  Please don't try to force your smiley face on someone else.  Don't add to that burden.  Just be there.  That's enough.  And if you're there and sharing your love and support, you may see a smile after all. 

Goodbye, Sweet Aries: Watching Someone's Gravity Shift

Recently, my brother had to put his dog down.  This may not seem like a big deal to a lot of people.  But they've had the dog for over 14 years.  His kids grew up with Aries being the center of their home, the heart of their family.  As they moved around, as their world hit several snags, as they grew up and left home, they still looked to Aries to show them what love was.  One of my nephews shared custody with his dad and took Aries home every other week.  He was the very center of gravity for all of them. 

Then came the day a tumor started to grow on his nose.  When they took him to a vet, they were told that surgery was not a very viable option, especially for an elderly dog.  They watched his medical problems get worse and worse with some concern.  But 14 is fairly old for a large dog.  Without a huge financial expenditure, there was not much anyone could do.  Even then, things looked iffy. 

They held onto him for as long as they could because they knew how much his loss would hurt.  When they took him in, he wagged his tail until the end, trusting and loving them into the beyond.  Some of them have seen his spirit as he's continued to watch over them. 

But that doesn't stop the pain.  For most of them, it feels like a child or their best friend has died.  I held my adult nephew (who never cries) as he sobbed out his pain onto my shoulder.  A piece of their soul, the unifying force in their divided family, is nowhere they can see him.  I've had pets die.  I've had people in fur die (animals that have become more than just a pet, more like a companion or a best friend).  But I've never been rocked to my soul quite as much as I saw in my brother's family. 

When I saw their pain, I thought of my own.  We sat and cried together.  I know you can't compare one kind of loss (that of a child) to another (a furbaby).  But there's a kinship, a connection, that can be made between those who have lost, regardless of what the loss is.  I don't think I would have understood their loss like I do without my own.  I can be grateful for the empathy I've learned that allows me to be there for them and cry with them.