Grieving During the Holidays

If you are looking forward to the upcoming holidays, raise your hand. If you did not raise your hand, keep reading. The holidays can be difficult in the best of times: the family obligations, the financial demands, and the blatant materialism make us feel anything but jolly. Six weeks of incessant Christmas music in every public place in the city is enough to make us want to become a recluse and shop strictly on the internet until January. Grieving is also a stressful time. Combining mourning with the pressure to maintain some Normam Rockwell ideal of a normal, happy family during the holidays is a recipe for an emotional meltdown. Here are a few tips to lessen the difficulty the holidays pose when we are grieving.

Anticipation is worse than reality

We have months to think about all the things we will dread during “the holidays,“ yet, when a specific day arrives, it is often not nearly as bad as we imagined. A single day goes by much more quickly than the weeks and months we have to ruminate. Our worst fears seldom manifest, and the day turns out more manageable than our expectations.

Plan ahead

When we are grieving, it is impossible to say what our mood will be or what we will need in a few hours much less several days or weeks in advance. Our emotions often feel out of our control. Planning ahead for the event(s) gives us some control, and that alone can be comforting. It is good to decide what we would like to do or not do, whom we would like to spend the day with, whom we would prefer to avoid, where we would like to spend the day, etc. Letting the host know specific wishes can help enlist his or her help in making it a pleasant day for us. Allow some flexibility so that if we wake up that morning and want to change the plan, we can. Driving our own car or arranging in advance with someone to take us home if we feel the need to remove ourselves early from the festivities is another good way to give us some control.

Lead the way

Often our loved ones are afraid they will upset us by mentioning the deceased, so they say nothing. We may need to be the one to lead the way. If we mention the deceased, that gives everyone else permission to talk about him or her, also. A simple comment like, “John would have loved this apple pie,” or, “I wish Susan could be here to share this with us” can be the icebreaker everyone needs to have a more natural conversation about our loved one. When we are grieving it can be difficult to be the teacher also, but this is the most effective way of getting the support we need. People cannot read our minds, so we must tell them. We may want to contact the host in advance to arrange to include a memory of the deceased in some way, for example, starting the meal with a toast to our loved one. Include children if they are present. They are often much more in tune with what they need, so they often spontaneously state their feelings, feelings adults are often thinking but are too scared to say.

Grieving takes much longer than we would like, so it is okay not to feel festive just because society tells us it is that time of the year to put on a happy face. Squelching the pain is not going to make it go away, so we need to be gentle and patient with ourselves.

Additional Readings on Grief

Beryl Kaminsky is a Licensed Professional Counselor specializing in grief, loss, and other life transitions. She can be reached at 713-303-9021 or www.houstongriefcounselor.com.

© MMVI Beryl Kaminsky