While this site’s archives will remain available, all future posts will be published exclusively on the new site. I’m looking forward to this next chapter and hope you’ll join me there.
Thank you for being such wonderful readers and for your continued support. See you on Substack!
It’s my fourth holiday season without Tom. Facebook’s “On This Day” feature has been particularly aggressive lately, serving up memories of holidays past like a relentless digital ghost. Here’s Tom and me at Christmas dinner with family. Here we are making latkes with friends. Here we are camping in Death Valley. Each photo is a reminder of not just what was, but what isn’t anymore.
I’ve always loved celebrations, even ones that aren’t technically “mine.” Growing up, I got to experience a mix of traditions—mostly Catholic until my mom died when I was 12, with a dash of Hanukkah from my father’s Jewish side of the family. What I learned from this blend wasn’t so much about religious significance as it was about the joy of gathering, the pleasure of good food, and the warmth of giving gifts. Even now, as a Buddhist adult, I’ve kept these celebrations alive in my own way, decorating a Christmas tree and hosting an annual latke dinner, creating my own meaning from these inherited traditions.
This is the first year since Tom died that I’m alone for Christmas. My daughter, stepson, and mother-in-law are all traveling. I keep telling people I’m fine with being alone—after all, December 25th is just another day when you strip away the cultural expectations. But there’s something undeniably hard about being alone on a day when it seems like everyone else is gathered with family. Especially when my own memories of the day are so vivid and happy.
Yesterday, I visited a hospice patient who’s unlikely to see New Year’s. We didn’t talk about the December holidays—I’m not even sure if she’s aware of them or if she cares about them. She wanted to talk about dying and what I knew about it from talking to other hospice patients. It was a good reminder that December 25 is not in and of itself anything special. I know her adult children feel like they should be with her on Christmas. They’ve decorated her house with a tree and replaced all the usual kitchen towels and potholders with red and green ones.
But grief and dying don’t care what the date on the calendar is. None of the holiday traditions can outweigh them. The tension between what dying people and grieving people feel and the insistence around them that this is “the happies time of the year” can make their grief feel even more isolating, as if they’re the only ones not participating in the mandatory joy
When I tell people I’ll be alone for Christmas, they immediately try to fix it. “Come to our house!” they say, or “No one should be alone on Christmas!” I appreciate their kindness, but sometimes being alone is easier than being the widow at someone else’s family celebration, watching their intact family traditions and trying to smile through the stomach-punch of grief that hits when someone makes a comment I know Tom would appreciate or a dish I know he would love is served.
I’ve noticed some folks in the Facebook Widow groups answering the question about whether they’ll be alone for the holidays with “I’ll be with my dogs,” “I’ll be with my cats,” or even, “I’ll be hanging out with my plants.” I love the way they are pushing pack on the idea that you’re alone if you’re not with other humans. And this reminds me that I won’t, in fact, be alone on Christmas: I’ll be with my two dogs, who are very cuddly in the winter.
Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for ourselves during the holidays is to accept that they’re going to be different now. Different doesn’t have to mean worse. This year, my Christmas plan involves Chinese food, snuggling with my dogs, and zero obligation to make conversation. That actually sounds pretty great.
I might spend some time looking at those Facebook memories, letting myself feel whatever comes up. I might text friends who are also alone or grieving. I might watch terrible holiday movies or ignore the holiday completely. The point is, I get to choose.
For others navigating holiday grief, whether it’s your first season without your person or your fifth, I want you to know that there’s no right way to do this. If you want to maintain all the old traditions, do it. If you want to create new ones, do that. If you want to pretend the holidays aren’t happening this year, that’s fine too. The only rule is to be gentle with yourself.
Elizabeth Kleinfeld is a disabled widow who blogs about grief, disability, Buddhist life, and joy. Sign up for her free monthly newsletter here.
I set my dead husband’s photo at the table again this year, propped in front of an empty chair at our fourth Thanksgiving without him. I look to his spot at the head of the table and smile. It’s not like a wound anymore, but like a familiar mark on a cherished family heirloom. We raised our glasses to toast him. He’s always with us in spirit.
In the first few months after Tom died, I struggled to understand how I could feel such intense and seemingly contradictory emotions at the same time. It took a long time to realize that they aren’t really contradictory and both stem from the same root: crazy love. Now, grief sitting right next to joy, neither one canceling the other out, feels normal.
One of the biggest surprises of this grief experience has been realizing that grief is not the opposite of joy. I can sit at a Thanksgiving table bursting with laughter and love, while that empty chair holds its space. The laughter, the love, and the absence are all there together. My heart holds all of it.
The next day, as we put up our holiday decorations, I sighed to my daughter that I had been thinking about taking down the blueprints that Tom put over the glass of the French doors. Tom had taped them there as a temporary fix years ago until we could get proper window coverings made. When she suggested framing a piece of them, something clicked, like finding the perfect place for a memento you’ve been holding onto. So I took the blueprints down and folded them carefully. I admired the glass that has been covered now for nearly five years.
Taking the blueprints down felt momentous, and I’m sure some of my friends have wondered if I ever would take them down. When I eventually frame the blueprints, I’ll hang them on either side of the French doors, which may someday have those proper coverings. I love watching how my grief and memories of Tom unfold in these surprising ways.
Every Thanksgiving, gratitude for Tom tops my list – not just for the time we had, but for teaching me that life is delicious and even the painful parts deserve attention. Life makes room for the contradictions, the missing and the joy.
I can miss Tom with an ache that still takes my breath away AND live this ridiculously wonderful life I’ve built. I can feel the weight of his absence AND the lightness of new joys. The missing doesn’t dim the joy any more than the joy erases the missing. They’ve learned to live together, these feelings, like old friends who’ve forgotten why they ever thought they couldn’t share the same space.
My life has expanded in ways I never imagined—my memoir writing, this blog, my end-of-life work, epic travels—and somehow Tom’s still here too. During the holidays especially, I feel both things: the weight of his absence and the lightness of living fully.
Here are two ways you can support a grieving person during the holidays:
After his stroke, Tom spent hours at a small black desk facing our porch, a compromise when his wheelchair made actually getting outside too difficult. The desk became his command center, gradually accumulating the tools and supplies for his unlikely new hobby: knife sharpening. Who else would take up knife sharpening after a stroke? That was pure Tom, finding a quirky way to adapt to his new circumstances while still expressing his need for a little danger.
His approach to organization hadn’t changed with the stroke. The knife sharpening supplies sprawled across the desk, spilling onto nearby surfaces. Tom had never been known for neatness. One of my favorite stories about his disorganization involves him having a pile of papers on the dashboard of his van that was so tall he could barely see over it. He finally got motivated to dump the pile of papers only to realize later that—oops—the pile had included a money order.
The stroke had left him with Left Neglect, unable to process any sensory input from left of his midline. We found workarounds for reading and writing, but computer use proved especially challenging. Eventually, his laptop migrated to the left side of the desk—the forgotten side—and disappeared under layers of papers, books, and sharpening supplies.
After he died, I moved the knife sharpening equipment to the garage, where it still makes me smile, remembering his dedication to this improbable hobby. I kept his journals and books and look through from time to time. His left neglect shows up in the pages where he started writing in the middle and continued to the right margin. He annotated some of the books he was reading, but the notes are clustered only on the right-hand pages.
The laptop stayed hidden in a drawer until last week, when I suddenly noticed the desk had drawers at all. Four years untouched. What might it hold? Pre-stroke emails, photos, browser histories—windows into who my husband was before his stroke. I plugged the laptop in and heard it whir to life but then I sat with my hands hovering over the keyboard for some time, trying to decide if I really wanted to know what was on the laptop.
I guessed incorrectly at the password and stopped.
I could keep guessing at the password. But I’ve handled all the practical matters of his life and death—the financial and legal matters have been settled. I have all the records and paperwork I need. What remains on that laptop belongs to him, to the private space of his thoughts and interests that existed separately from our shared life.
Tom was a man who valued his privacy. Before his stroke, we gave each other ample space for hobbies and friendships that belonged to only one of us. We were never a couple who did everything together and we valued our independence as much as we did our relationship as a couple.
Tom lost his independence completely with the stroke. He took that loss with incredible grace, but I watched how hard it was for him to need help with everything from getting dressed to using the bathroom. Now, 3 ½ years after his death, I can honor his privacy by leaving his laptop unopened. While part of me is curious about what I might find there, a deeper part knows that respecting the boundaries he valued in life is a way of honoring his dignity even after death. The laptop will stay in the drawer, holding whatever secrets it contains.
When folks ask how I’m doing since the election, I find myself saying, “Hanging in there, all things considered.” And by “all things considered,” I mean watching over half the country vote for someone who thinks it’s okay to mock disabled people, treats sexual assault like it’s no big deal, plans to legislate from an antiquated concept of sexuality, and dehumanizes people who have made epic sacrifices to be here. Just like after my husband died, I dread being asked “how are you?”
This kind of hurt feels surprisingly like other kinds of grief, and that makes sense. Just like when someone you love dies, the election of a candidate who mocks your values and rejects your humanity can mean the loss of a dream. The future will not look the way I hoped. Things I thought I could count on now feel uncertain.
Folks often think of grief and disability as purely personal experiences, but when we live in a world that expects us to bounce back from loss in a few days of bereavement leave, or navigate buildings with no ramps, or explain our access needs over and over, those personal experiences bump up against political realities. Every time someone has to choose between keeping their disability benefits and accepting a job offer, that’s political. Every time a grieving person has to fight with insurance companies while planning a funeral, that’s political.
When we have to justify our need for accommodations or defend our right to grieve differently, we’re dealing with systems and structures that were built without us in mind. And the ways we respond to those factors is political. When we share our stories, when we advocate for change, when we refuse to squeeze our experiences into society’s too-small boxes, we’re doing political work. We’re saying, “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with us. There’s something wrong with a world that doesn’t make room for grief and disability as normal parts of human life.”
I’m treating my election grief similarly to how I treated my grief after my husband died:
Like any grieving process, grieving the results of this election won’t be linear and it won’t look the same for each of us. Give yourself and others grace. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is to keep showing up.
Whenever I meet someone who is newly widowed, they ask when they will feel normal again. I remember asking that question of my new widowed friends, too. We all want to know how long it will take before the crushing pain in our hearts cools lets up a bit. I worried during the first year that I would die from heartbreak and I see other widows posting similar sentiments in the Facebook widow groups I belong it.
This journey is different for each person, but for me, around the three-year mark I started to feel kind of normal. I still felt grief but it was no longer overwhelming. I’m almost 3 ½ years out now and yes, I still miss Tom horribly, but I’m so used to him being gone that missing him is just part of my routine.
In the early months, grief was all-consuming, filtering every of life. Even basic tasks like cooking, getting dressed, and answering email felt impossible, and work held no meaning. Simple objects like Tom’s last glass of grapefruit juice in the fridge or clothes that still carried his scent became precious artifacts. I couldn’t bear to think of moving them, much less getting rid of them. Every day I was pushing through thick brain fog.
Around the six-month mark, there was a pattern of waves—intense periods of mourning followed by calmer stretches where the brain fog lifted slightly. I was able to take some small steps forward, like giving away some of Tom’s clothes and dismantling the makeshift bedroom in the living room and moving back down to our old bedroom. Every “first” without Tom—holidays, birthdays, traveling—brought fresh waves of grief.
Over the course of the second year, those waves continued, but the calm stretches got longer. I’ve heard many people say the second year is harder than the first, because the numbness of the first year has faded but the pain remains. That feels true for me. Those calm stretches got longer, but when the fresh waves of grief hit, they hit hard. During the calm stretches, I began feeling engaged with work again and did some entertaining. During the grief waves, I was completely flattened. I tried to imagine going rafting, for example, and just felt sick at the thought.
During the second year, I worked to develop new routines around my new life as a widow, which meant letting go of routines I loved that were built around my life with Tom. I still miss the old routines. For example, getting him out of bed after his stroke was a complicated procedure, so we learned how to enjoy our coffee together before he got fully out of bed; I helped him sit up and swivel around so his feet were on the floor, then I brought our coffee into the bedroom area of the living room and he drank his coffee while he was sitting on the edge of the bed and I sat at his feet while we discussed the upcoming day.
Letting go of that routine after he died was tough. I kept the bed in the living room for months after he died and sometimes sat on the floor to drink my coffee, in the same spot where I had when he was alive. After I moved back to our bedroom in the basement, I experimented with drinking my coffee in different rooms and during different activities, like reading or puttering around the house. I drank my coffee outside. I tried switching to tea.
At about 2 ½ years out, my morning coffee routine stabilized into one I still observe today. I journal and talk to the dogs while I drink my first cup of coffee. Talking to the dogs kind of takes the place of talking through my day with Tom. It’s a nice way to begin each day, feeling connected to the dogs and myself (through the journaling).
By three years out, grief had become a familiar companion rather than an overwhelming force. The pain hasn’t lessened, but the ability to carry it while living fully has grown stronger. Dreams of Tom have become frequent, offering new ways to feel connected to him. Grief no longer filters every experience, but it’s always there, laying at my feet like a sleeping dog.
I have been told over and over that time heals grief and every time, I call bullshit. Time does not heal the grief. I have worked hard to get where I am, with regular therapy, multiple support groups, and tons of reflection through daily journaling. I’ve had the help of many friends and family members who have been unwavering in their support. I have not “gotten over” Tom’s death by any stretch and I don’t intend to. I love him as much now as I ever did—if anything, my love for him has grown stronger over time. I have reshaped my life around Tom’s absence, missing him, honoring him, and accepting that I won’t see him again in this lifetime.
For me, that’s how “normal” looks, and I like it.
Accepting that I did the best I could when my husband had his stroke is an ongoing process. I often find myself thinking, “yes, I did the best I could,” followed by “my best wasn’t very good,” and then I dwell on that second thought.
Of course I would be a better caregiver today than I was when Tom needed me. I know so much more now about holding space than I did then. I am better rested now without the exhaustion of around-the-clock caregiving. Without the constant worries about Tom’s pain, his mental health, and his prognosis, I can now reflect and make decisions at a more leisurely pace.
And oh, yeah, my caregiving all took place during a pandemic, which made it difficult or impossible for many friends and loved ones to help out.
Still, while I generally feel pretty good about how I showed up for Tom, there are times when I am reminded that acceptance isn’t a one-and-done thing but rather something I need to do over and over and over again.
I have spent the last week accepting again that I did the best I could.
Last week I read Summoned by a Stroke: An Homage to Love, Relationship, and Living Life Fully, Judy Friesem’s memoir of life with her husband Kim after he had a stroke. There are many similarities between Kim and my husband Tom. Like Tom, Kim had a massive stroke on the right side of his brain, leaving him paralyzed on the left. Like Tom, Kim exhibited incredible grace and acceptance of his new reality.
But I saw many differences between Judy and me. Judy seemed to have much more insight than I did into what Kim was thinking, feeling, and needing. Where Judy is generous, I was narrow-minded. Where Judy seemed to intuitively know what Kim needed, I had to figure out Tom’s needs by trial and error. Even when Kim couldn’t speak or write, Judy was able to communicate with him, while I sometimes overlooked basic niceties or argued with Tom or thought I knew better than he did what he wanted.
I know, I know—Friesem’s book is an edited version of what happened. I know she had imperfect moments. I know she struggled. I know this, and yet, I found myself thinking as I read, “I wish I had been half the caregiver she was.”
I did the best I could at the time . . . and I hate that I couldn’t do better at the time.
In this current round of accepting that I did the best I could, I am finding that talking to myself in the second person is more effective than reminding myself I did the best I could. I talk to myself, saying. “You did the best you could,” or “Give yourself some grace—you were operating under terrible circumstances” or “Tom loved you and appreciated everything you did.”
I think using the second person puts a little space between who I am now and who I was then and makes it more possible for me to feel compassion for that past version of me.
That space also allows me to see the distance I’ve come since then. My listening skills, in particular, are so much better now, and while I wish Tom could have benefitted from them, I know he’d be proud of having taught me to listen.
“Another lesson from Tom DeBlaker,” he would say with a wry smile, and I would hug him and bury my head into his shoulder.
I have been very up and down with my grief the last few months. The three-year anniversary of my husband’s death was less awful than I expected, but then I was a bit blindsided by hard grief a month later. The last few weeks have felt less tumultuous and I’ve noticed a kind of tender sweetness in my grief.
A couple weeks ago, I traveled to Sweden with my sister and my 13-year old nephew. They both knew my husband well and Tom came up in conversation regularly. At one point, my nephew began reminiscing about some of his favorite adventures with my husband. He mentioned a video message Tom had sent him just a week before he died.
I had forgotten about that message. My then 10-year old nephew had been at our house and we had set up an obstacle course in the alley for Tom to go through in his new motorized wheelchair. My nephew had asked if he could try the course in the wheelchair and Tom said yes, but then before that could happen, Tom was exhausted and went in for a nap. Hour later, after my nephew had left and Tom had napped, Tom told me he felt bad that he had not followed through on his promise that my nephew could ride in the wheelchair and he asked me to record him apologizing. I did, sent the video, and completely forgot about it.
When my nephew mentioned it a couple weeks ago, I asked him if we could watch it. He immediately called it up on his phone. Hearing my husband’s voice and seeing the exhaustion on his face was a little shocking—I had forgotten both how ragged he was at the end and how responsible he felt toward my nephew. I was overwhelmed with love for Tom, seeing his attention to my nephew even in the face of his own profound exhaustion and struggles. And I was filled with love and compassion for my nephew, who had this video easily accessible, indicating that he watched it regularly. Even after death, my husband made this boy feel loved and seen.
My nephew and I were quiet for a few minutes after we watched the message, neither of us saying anything. In that silence, we connected over our mutual loss and love. Sharing that moment with my nephew made me feel so close to both him and my husband. My nephew and me, together in silence, lost in remembering, missing, and grieving—it was deliciously sweet and sad. I said, “I miss him so much,” and my nephew said he did too. That was all the discussion we had, but in the silence we shared, there was rich and deep communication.
A few days later, my nephew was with me when I scattered some of Tom’s ashes under an old pine tree in one of Stockholm, Sweden’s many nature preserves. I think Tom would appreciate the bed of pine needles and nearby clear lake. On the hike out of the preserve, my nephew told our guide that Tom was “the kind of uncle who lets you set things on fire in the garage.”
Hearing how others remember my husband fills me with love, for him and for them. Setting things on fire in the garage may not seem sweet, but I remember Tom planning before my nephew’s visits to have certain flammable items available and others tucked away. He had safety protocols in mind. Setting things on fire with that boy was an act of mentoring, trust building, and love. Sometimes my husband’s sweetness showed up as setting things on fire. Sometimes it showed up as making a video apology for not sharing his wheelchair.
One of the best reasons I can think of to keep talking about our dead loved ones is that it strengthens our relationships with the living. Knowing that my nephew still vividly remembers setting things on fire with my husband and keeps the video apology makes me love my nephew even more. We share a deep love for Tom, we both feel shaped in some way by him. There’s a hole where Tom was for both of us. Neither of us is alone in our grief.
For a long time after my mother died, I was angry. Sometimes I was angry that she had died when I was only 12, which made me feel like even more of a freak than I had when she was alive. Other times my anger was directed at her more personally, fixating on what I felt were her failings before she died. All through high school and college, I felt like kids who had “normal” mothers had learned things about life that I had not learned, and I held her responsible. How to be loved, how to feel secure in the world, and how to interact with strangers, for example.
Before my mother died, her addiction to alcohol made her unreliable, unpredictable, and moody. She could go from laughing to throwing things in a flash. What I had learned from her was to not trust adults and to never let my guard down.
When my daughter was a child, I read children’s books to her that taught lessons I had never learned: some days don’t go the way you want and it’s not your fault, someone else’s success doesn’t take anything from you, it’s ok to have needs and to ask for what you want, apologizing isn’t a sign of weakness.
As I parented my own daughter, I constantly realized what I had missed out on. When my daughter needed someone to advocate for her at school, I was there. When she needed to be reassured about her abilities, I was there. When she needed advice on social messiness, I was there. I had always suspected that kids with a mother had something I didn’t, but I didn’t quite know what it was. As I parented my own daughter, I learned what it was.
My anger intensified and I carried it with the indignation of the 12-year old girl I was when my mother died. Even when I had a happy memory of my mother, it was tainted by the rage I felt over what she hadn’t provided for me.
A few years ago, my therapist said something about my mother not being able to show up for me the way she probably wanted to. That reframing opened the door for me to rethink many of the beliefs I had been holding onto about my mother.
Instead of being angry with her for being an addict, I was able to feel compassion for someone who didn’t have the skills to cope with the stresses of her life. She came from an alcoholic home herself. Of her three siblings, it fell to her to care for their father when he was descending into dementia. Her marriage was a difficult one, and reading between the lines, I believe she was stalked by an ex. Certainly her life had not been an easy one.
When I think of her facing the challenges that may have led to her addiction, I wish she had lived in a time of more awareness and less shame. I imagine her waking up each morning and setting out to not drink, to be present for my sister and me—and herself. And then being disgusted with herself for not living up to that commitment, and my heart goes out to her.
Instead of being angry with her for not advocating for me, I was able to feel compassion for her never having had an advocate herself. While she may not have been outwardly affectionate, I remember her being incredibly supportive of other women who left bad situations, giving them rides to the airport or money or a place to sleep for a night. When I look for it, I can find the advocating spirit.
When I think of my mother as doing the best she could, I am filled with love and compassion for her. Holding a grudge with a dead person is a no-win situation. It’s exhausting to never be able to ask for an explanation, to know that an apology will never come. And I don’t need an apology from her. She did the best she could.
The Buddha said that holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. My mother is already dead, so holding onto anger toward her is particularly absurd and pointless. When I was able to let go of my anger, the weight of it transformed into tenderness.
The three-year anniversary of my husband’s death was what I expected it to be—very sad for a couple of days before and the day of the anniversary and then a feeling of relief when the anniversary had passed. I’ve noticed myself feeling relief whenever a milestone passes—anniversaries, his birthday, the holidays that meant a lot to him—as if it’s an accomplishment to have survived it.
The three-year anniversary was sad, but not intense and I wondered if maybe my grief was becoming more quiet, like something that might always rumble beneath the surface but only make itself known from time to time and then in subtle ways.
A month later, my reaction to the 37-month anniversary shook that wondering out of me. For four days, I had the weight in my chest that I felt regularly during the first year, the feeling that I couldn’t take a deep breath. The weight sat there, constricting my lungs and pressing on my throat, sapping my energy.
For the first two of those four days, I was right back in the “I can’t believe he’s dead” mindset I felt during the first year. My first thought of each day was “Tom is dead,” and everything after that thought felt like a heroic effort. I spent much of those two days on the couch, sleeping or crying, in disbelief that my husband was gone.
The next two days were a little easier but I still felt the heavy fog in my brain that I had lived with during the first year. The weight moved out of my chest and concentrated itself in my throat, where it made my voice feel wavery every time I spoke.
I figured out what was going on midway through the second day. I was experiencing cumulative grief—when each new loss compounds the grief from a previous loss. A few days before this episode began, I had learned that a friend Tom and I had spent a lot of time with early in our relationship had died.
Learning of her death spurred me to look at photos from that era of my life with Tom. There were so many pictures of the three of us together—on raft trips, at a wine festival, taking a break during a motorcycle adventure. Over and over I was struck by the thought, “I’m the only person in this photo who is still alive.”
The new grief for our friend stirred up my grief for my husband.
I didn’t fight it. I gave myself grace. I canceled everything that wasn’t necessary and let myself hole up on the couch for a couple of days. I scrolled through photos of my husband, I cried, I listened to music that reminded me of times together.
He loved the singers Carsie Blanton and David Bromberg, so I listened to a lot of their music. We had seen both together and listening to their music brought back a flood of memories. Tom was an effusive audience member at concerts, yelling his appreciation for a good lyric or a cheeky band interaction. Both are clever songwriters and he found much to whoop for.
With each memory, I was torn between the warm fuzzy feeling of reminiscence and the heartbreak of knowing those reminiscences are all I have left now.
The weight gradually lifted, at least for now. I know I will never again hear Carsie Blanton or David Bromberg without the absence of my husband weighing on me.
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