SADNESS & HAPPINESS CAN & DO COEXIST
Coping with grief when everyone else is celebrating
My husband, Bill, died suddenly and unexpectedly of an aortic dissection six weeks before Christmas 2017. My life shattered overnight and I was plunged into an unknown and unwelcome world of grief, agony and despair. I didn’t know which way was up, or even who I really was any more. The timing of such a monumental event was, in many ways, irrelevant – my life would have shattered in any case – but the proximity to Christmas added a new layer of complication and confusion. With my dislike of traditional Christmases, Bill and I normally escaped abroad in search of sun, but that particular year we had planned a quiet Christmas at home, just the two of us, with a boxset and a box of chocolates. With Bill gone, that prospect clearly felt less than inviting.
Even in the midst of the shock and the busyness surrounding funeral arrangements, the upcoming festivities still hovered menacingly. How on earth would I cope? Just when I least needed to be reminded of the importance of family, I got the full-frontal assault; weeks of being bombarded relentlessly with widespread images of loved-up togetherness and joy. Not ideal when grieving, to put it mildly, yet impossible to avoid. It all just highlighted my aloneness more starkly.
I had been kept afloat in the immediate horrific aftermath of Bill’s death by the supportive presence and care of my friends, but they, of course, needed to return to their own families for Christmas. I couldn’t bear the depressing thought of staying home alone, yet despite many kind invitations, neither could I contemplate being a spare wheel at someone else’s day, trying not to bring the mood down for them and feeling like an outsider while others enjoyed the families and children I lacked.
I decided to volunteer at a homeless shelter. I reasoned that being around people worse off than me would prevent me
Allow yourself to acknowledge that at times, it will be hard
sinking too low into my own misery; that I would be serving a useful function. I might possibly even meet new friends and – most importantly – with the unusualness of it, no memories of former Christmases with Bill would creep in and ambush me.
It was hard. Of course it was. I knew it would be, just as the two subsequent years have been. Each of these have seen me choose the escape-and-deny option again by going abroad to a sunny yoga retreat where Christmas is barely mentioned. I know myself well enough to appreciate what I need – to be somewhere so out of the ordinary that I don’t feel triggered. In some ways, I am lucky that Bill and I didn’t have rituals or traditions that I had to choose whether to keep or discard. But while avoidance works for me, it will not be an option for everyone, nor would many people even want to consider that route.
If you are grieving at Christmas, however recent the death has been, the most important thing is to give yourself permission to do it your way. Whether that is keeping everything exactly as it always was or turning tradition on its head, keep self-compassion at the forefront. Grief will always come in waves, especially at Christmas when we are ‘meant’ to be happy yet miss those we’ve lost more than ever. Allow yourself to acknowledge that at times, it will be hard, painful and seemingly unbearable, and it is okay to cry and be sad about how much you miss them. But there will also be times when you lose yourself in the pleasure of being surrounded by family; when you can commemorate those who are gone and create new and lovely memories and traditions to take forward.
The sadness and the happiness can and do coexist. Either one may provoke guilt, anguish or self-recriminations, but they are both natural and necessary. Go with the flow of these polarities, inhabit each moment fully, enjoy the bits you can and be kind to yourself during the bits you can’t.