Tag Archives: holidays

grieving

Different not Worse: My First Christmas Alone since My Husband Died

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. 

grieving

Holiday Grief: Empty Chair, Full Heart

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:

  1. Acknowledge the loss. Holiday cheer can make those of us grieving feel more alone, not less. The festive atmosphere can heighten awareness of who’s missing. Instead of avoiding mention of the person who died, share memories of past holidays with them. Ask about their traditions and favorite celebrations. Let the grieving person know it’s okay to feel both joy and sadness – that remembering their loved one adds meaning to the season rather than diminishing it. Invite stories, look at old photos together, or incorporate their cherished holiday customs into current celebrations.
  2. Hold space for contradictions. Grief and celebration aren’t mutually exclusive – many who are grieving want to participate in holiday joy while acknowledging their loss. Rather than making assumptions, ask what level of celebration feels right to them. Some may want to fully engage in festivities while others prefer to dip in and out. Create safe spaces within celebrations where they can step away to process emotions. Let them know it’s okay to laugh and cry, to toast their loved one’s memory and also enjoy making new ones. The key is giving them agency to navigate celebrations in whatever way serves them best.
Accessibility + Dis/ability

Shorter Days Bring Disability Worries

Colorado, where I live, officially has four seasons, but for me, there are two seasons: light and dark. My low vision is a complicating factor all the time, but when there’s more darkness in a day than light, I am in a constant state of anxiety.

Around this time of year, when the days start getting noticeably shorter, I shift from appreciating the crisp autumn air and beautiful fall colors to dreading the dangers that come with more darkness for me.

Darkness is coming. Like a character in a fantasy drama series, I have that thought with a shudder when the leaves start turning.

I start making mental notes during the day about the uneven sidewalks on my block and the construction zone near my usual bus stop so I can avoid them in the dark. I try to remember where the tree branches hanging low enough to hit me on my walks with the dogs are, knowing I won’t see them when I walk the dogs at night.

When the days are long, I love walking the dogs and look forward to our jaunts. But from now until the time change in March, at least one of their walks will take place in the dark and I will breathe a sigh of relief when I make it safely back home. My late husband gave me a headlamp to wear when I walk them in the dark, which helps, but not enough to make me feel confident of where I’m stepping. Also, because I am sensitive to bright light, sometimes the illumination of the flashlight hurts my eyes.

Every year when we change our clocks in March, I breathe a sigh of relief. I survived another dark season. I prefer the weather of the dark season but the dark itself sucks so much energy from me. The fear of not knowing what I can’t see weighs on me a little more heavily each year.

Mental health conditions, like Seasonal Affective Disorder and depression, can become more intense when light is limited. I know a lot of people who say their depression and anxiety get worse around the winter holidays, with the pressure of mandatory cheeriness and expectations of increased socializing. If you’re grieving, the holiday season may make you miss your loved one more intensely.

And it’s not just the increased stretches of darkness that make the dark season challenging for people. The cold temperatures that typically come with darker seasons can trigger symptoms of many neurological conditions, as well as asthma, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis.

The dark season was more treacherous for my husband after his stroke, too. Pushing a wheelchair through snow or over ice is tough. One time my mother-in-law had to push me while I pushed his wheelchair up an icy ramp—otherwise the wheelchair and I would start sliding back down. Slush would clog up the wheelchair’s wheels. Melting snow created frigid puddles that we couldn’t navigate around.

As we head into another dark season, I hope you’ll give yourself and others grace. There’s a lot to love about the dark season; I’m a devoted fan of hot chocolate, snuggling under a thick blanket, holiday music and festivals, and the glittery look of fresh snow. But for many of us, the dark season comes with an extra dose of struggle.

grieving

Grieving during the Holidays: Going Down the Christmas Rabbit Hole

I deliberately turned down offers of company for Christmas Eve and Christmas this year, looking forward to having the days of peaceful solitude to myself to relax, bake, and snuggle with the dogs. As a BuJew (Buddhist Jew), my interest in Christmas is all about the cookies, cheer, and delicious smell of pine needles. The day itself holds no special meaning to me.

Or so I thought. As I was trying to go to sleep the night before Christmas Eve, I found myself thinking of all the adventures my husband and I had around Christmas. Since the holiday wasn’t special to either of us, we often traveled on or around it, without the worries of so many holiday travelers.

Many years we drove or flew to Oregon to visit his brother and sister-in-law. My husband, his brother, and sister-in-law were an epic threesome, with over 30 years of rich history and goofy antics. Together, the three were a card- and music-playing, motorcycle-riding pack. Having no skills with cards, music, or motorcycles, I became their sidekick. I was happy to be their videographer, heckler, or appreciate audience (and often it was hard to tell which role I was fulfilling).

When the weather allowed, they put down the cards and played bocce, and then I was their caddy. When they brought their musical talents together, with Tom on harmonica, his brother on guitar, and his sister-in-law singing, I was their groupie and once, muse, as Tom wrote a song about my rice pudding.

Two years we went to Las Vegas and spent Christmas eating in the Jewish tradition, eating Asian food. Another time we did a road trip to Death Valley and camped. Several years we stayed in Denver, spending time with local family.

I spent most of Christmas Eve going down a rabbit hole, correlating emails, photos, and calendars to figure out what we did for each of the 12 Christmases we had together. This exercise is kind of like creating the evidence board a crime investigator makes. I scribbled down notes and clues gleaned from photos and tried to connect them with other details and clues from calendars and emails to figure out exactly what we did each Christmas and what the highlights of it were.  

Once I nailed down what we did each Christmas, I did what I now call “the death math”: I calculated how many years away from dying he was for each Christmas and then reviewed how we spent each one with the frame of “we didn’t know he’d be dead in X years.” The rice pudding song takes on more poignancy when I think, “Two and half years before he died, Tom wrote a song about how much he loved my rice pudding.” Looking at each Christmas in relation to his death makes each one a step in us parting ways.

My reconstruction makes visible a beautiful and heartbreaking arc, with earlier Christmases involving more debauchery and later Christmases becoming a little more quiet and reflective. Our last Christmas, after his stroke, had us talking most of the day about love and forgiveness. Because of the pandemic, it was just the two of us and the dogs. We did a Zoom call with his family and with my daughter, who usually spends Christmas with her grandparents in another state. We read, I cooked us a delicious meal and we ate. Tom had a glass of wine, reserved now only for special occasions because of his vast medication regimen. We had both been working hard on forgiveness together, listening to audiobooks and podcasts on the subject and doing forgiveness meditations and exercises together. It was an emotional, intense, and loving Christmas. Without it, he would have died with some important things left unsaid between us.

I suspect the gnawing feeling of loneliness for him is with me to stay. I miss his quiet company, his love for the outdoors and for every damn dog that ever was born, his irreverent humor, his conviction that Christmas lights ought to be put up no matter what (after his stroke, his son dutifully came over to hang our lights), and about six million other things.

When someone dies, Jews say “may their memory be a blessing.” Every one of my memories with Tom is a blessing and I have so many blessings. The pain comes from wanting more, being attached to the idea that I didn’t get enough time with him. I remind myself that I got exactly as much time with him as I got. “Enough” is a tricky word. What is enough time with a person you love?

grieving

A Weekend to Sink into Grief

Halloween hits me harder than the other fall/winter holidays. It was my late husband’s favorite holiday and his fervor for celebrating it was contagious. He’d start gearing up for it by July, thinking about costumes and often doing research or ordering specialty components for whatever he had dreamed up.

We normally celebrated by rafting and camping for two days over the pre-Halloween weekend with fellow Halloween fanatics.  

This year marks my third Halloween without him. I noted last year that the second Halloween hit me harder than the first. This year, the entire month of October felt like a slow build up to the final weekend, with my chest getting tighter and tighter as the month progressed.  

I noticed myself feeling more and more on edge as the final weekend loomed. That Friday got off to a rough start as someone I had hired to do some winterizing at my house didn’t show up. I went to work for a few hours but couldn’t stop thinking about how my husband would have done the winterizing himself. It made me miss him intensely and I felt sobs building up inside of me. I wondered how I would make it through the session I had scheduled for the afternoon with my trainer and then evening plans with a friend.

And then I had an epiphany: I didn’t have to make it through a session with my trainer and evening plans with a friend. I could cancel. My trainer and friend were both quite gracious and encouraged me to grieve in whatever way I needed. Emboldened, I decided to clear my weekend and set some intentions.

In the early days of my grief, I often spent an entire weekend sinking into my grief, but for the last year at least, while I’ve felt a lot of grief, it’s mostly been a layer on top of whatever I’m doing. I have given myself a few hours here and there to settle into it and be sad, but it’s been quite a while since I gave myself an entire day to be sad, so a whole weekend to nurse my grief felt luxurious.

I went through photos and videos of our life together, listened to voice messages he left me, and wandered around the garage, touching his workbench and the tools I’ve kept. I still don’t know the names of most of them, but that doesn’t matter.

Luckily, he had a well-documented life. I have photos and videos of him doing so many of the things he loved to do—riding motorcycles, rafting, playing with dogs, remodeling, playing cards and dominoes with his brother and sister-in-law, road tripping, camping, gardening.

He had a knack for turning everything into a competition, and I have the video proof of that. I am not competitive, so he got used to competing with himself. I had forgotten about when we were in the airport in Frankfurt, Germany and he invented a contest with himself, trying to get his wheelie suitcase to do more and more elaborate maneuvers. I watched the videos over and over again, savoring his voice, his hands on the suitcase handle, his cocky explanations about the twists and spins.

I went to the bench commemorated to him on Sunday morning. It was covered in snow and the plaque with his name on it shined. I sat and cried for as long as I could stand the cold.

I wore his fisherman hat and flannel shirt. I put my wedding band on, relishing how beautiful it looked on my hand and how right the weight of it felt on my finger.

A couple friends texted me, offering to distract me and make me laugh. I explained that I didn’t want distraction. I was laughing plenty. Crying, too, but there is often quite a lot to laugh about when I’m grieving. I still don’t know if I lost my breath while watching the suitcase spinning videos from laughter or crying.

I closed out the weekend by attending the one event I had not canceled: a family dinner with his mom and son, my daughter, and a cousin. We reminisced about some of his antics and his terrifying driving.

It was a good weekend, and while I was sad on Monday, my breathing felt much less tight. Tomorrow is November 1, and I look forward to drawing in a deep breath without effort.