A loss that doesn’t break for the holidays

It happens, I’d say, three or four times a week. I’ll come across some piece of information, some bit of historical trivia, some nagging question, and my mind will immediately go to one place: I need to talk to Owen about that.

Owen is my brother. He died six months ago.

Even as my brain is thinking of him, knowing he’s the one person who would find this particular tidbit interesting, or who might remember the detail that escapes me — especially if it has to do with California, where he lived — I know he’s not there to talk to. It doesn’t take a second to register, it happens automatically. I know the truth. And yet my brain’s initial reaction, over and over again, is the same.

Something about it doesn’t quite seem real.

Will this end at some point? Will my brain find some other go-to for such situations?

I turned 45 in June. I’m in reasonably good health. Given actuarial projections, barring something catastrophic, I might have three or four more decades. Forty years without Owen? That doesn’t seem possible. It feels like it must be wrong. And yet this is where we are.

The column is slated to publish Christmas Day, so apologies if no one is interested in reading about loss. I won’t feel bad if anyone decides to skip this one. But grief is often amplified on what are meant to be happy days, so it seems like something worth considering.

Grappling with loss comes with its own conflicting feelings. I feel sad for myself, but that’s often accompanied by guilt that many people are likely feeling worse — Owen’s wife and his children, mostly. His daughter is in high school and his son in college, and I know whatever I’m dealing with is magnified many times over for them. It will affect their lives from this day forward.

Then there are Owen’s mother and his father — my mother and father, for those paying attention. Losing a child, at any age, is said to be the worst pain one can experience, and I’m in no position to doubt that. Yes, I’m sad, but am I doing enough for them? What can be done?

The very least that can be asked is to understand that everyone is going through something. Maybe it’s grief or hardship, but everyone reaches a point in their lives when difficult times become closer to the norm than the exception. You’re lucky if you can make it into adulthood without that experience.

I was fortunate like that. My family was mostly healthy in my early years, and the older members who we lost were for a variety of reasons not in my life all that much. I was an adult before real loss started arriving.

My kids aren’t so lucky. They’ve lost two uncles, both of whom they were close to, just since the start of the pandemic — one to cancer, one to an accidental drug overdose. Neither is easier than the other, and the upshot is my wife and I both dealing with the recent death of a close family member, both accompanied with worries for aging parents. These aren’t the kinds of early life experiences I would have wished on my preteen sons, but we don’t get to decide when the world starts becoming real.

For Owen, this is not only the first Christmas without him, it coincides, like every year, with his birthday, the day after Christmas. He had an entire lifetime of “This will be for both your birthday and Christmas,” since no one had a whole lot of energy for celebrating only one day after opening presents. It was tough luck on his part, and now that he’s gone, it brings a different level of sadness to the season.

There is nothing to be gained from comparing yourself with others. There are always people going through something that appears to be worse, whether it’s in your own family or beyond.

The best idea, then, is to assume everyone has something. Whether theirs is worse than yours doesn’t matter — grief affects each person individually. No one is free of loss, or potential loss, or the worry about loss. Kids may be too young to know it, but it will affect them, too.

It doesn’t take a break for Christmas or any other day. It’s why those days can be hardest of all.

In the meantime, I just found out some weird facts about a random California politician, and I really need to find someone who would want to talk about it.

Contributed photo The writer, left, visiting his brother, Owen, at college in the 1980s.