Category Archives: Holidays

Holidays

Shopping and Grieving During the Holidays

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One of the most stressful parts of the Christmas, Hanukkah and the holiday season is shopping for gifts but when you’ve experienced a loved one’s death, it seems almost unbearable.

Family and friends are still expecting their gifts and it is difficult, especially for little ones, to comprehend that somehow you decided to sit out this season. So let’s look at a few shortcuts to keep this task managable.

Online sites are by far the most efficient use of your time, your energy and your sanity. You sit, do some surfing, find what you want and presto, it shows up at your door. What a blessing the internet is for grieving-stricken folks. More sites are offering online deals than before and if you order from one site, chances are your shipping will be limited or perhaps zero.

Catalogues…same premise. Flip, choose, order by phone or on the web.

If you need to go to the mall, be prepared for the holiday music, the crowds, the lines, the hectic pace and of course, the people. Let’s take one at a time…

The holiday music can flip you back to a time when the person you loved who has died was shopping with you and perhaps you were singing that song together. Maybe you sang it in the car with the children. Either way that memory can pop up and you well up with tears or feel tightening in the chest.

Crowds…you’ll have less tolerance for nonsense now. Expect it. Crowds don’t seem to fit in the picture. You’re just trying to keep your emotional balance and don’t need the pushing and shoving and diving into piles of clothing for the best bargain…get the picture.

The lines…you don’t have as much patience as you normally would so long lines trying to get to a cash register is really the job of a good friend who goes to the mall with you.

The hectic pace…same issue with the crowds. This year your tolerance is low and rushing around trying to get everything done when you’re energy level will be low to begin with, can be a difficult task.

People…this might sound like a funny one, but think about this. You’ve lost your husband, sometime since last Christmas, and here you are walking in the mall, you sit to have coffee. As you begin the people watch, since you’re staring into space, you glance over to see a couple about your age who is embracing. Ouch.

Or you lost a child this year, you’re walking through one of the major department stores and unaware you walk right past the little girls’ section. It occurs to you that you won’t need to buy anything in that department this year. Double ouch.

Now that you know some of the ‘hazards’ you can be prepared. It’s more about being aware of what can occur, so you won’t put yourself into a position where you’ll be surprised. Just a little thoughtful planning will help make shopping this season more bearable.

Take the time to listen to your heart and obey what it’s telling you. If you can’t do any of this, have a friend or family member help. If you need to limit gift giving, that ok too. Just communicate it all beforehand to your loved ones. You’re gonna make it through!! Promise.

Emotional Challenges, Holidays

After the Family Meeting

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So you’ve gathered everyone together and you’ve courageously listened to all the viewpoints about whether to ‘Christmas or Not to Christmas’.

You got more than you bargained for…some want the whole works, some want a condensed version, some want nothing at all. Now what?

It’ll be somewhere in the middle.

Those who want it all, will understand it’s just too overwhelming for you. Those that want nothing will need to honor that the person who died would want you to still live your life. And those who wanted something less than was ideal, are the compromisers of the bunch and thank God for them.

Now consider the list:

  • Tree
  • Decorations
  • Baking
  • Cooking
  • Shopping for gifts/food
  • Entertaining
  • Invitations/Events in the community
  • Cleaning/Painting
  • Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Dinner

Take this list, and add to it if need be, and separate into four columns.

First column is the task (above), second column is how you usually handle this task, third column (most important) is ‘How could I do this differently’ and fourth column is ‘Who can I get to help me with this?’

Now that you have a sense of what everyone in the household wants, develop the answers to these questions on paper, let it sit a bit, then revise again. It’s a very interesting exercise which will soon show just how much time and energy we normally put into our traditions. It may be the cause of unnecessary stress at this point in our grieving process, so please take that into account.

Once you see it on paper, it can be much easier to reevaluate with family just what is ‘do-able’ this year.

Holidays

To Christmas or Not to Christmas – That is the Question

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Last evening as I was decorating and generally clearing away too many papers (perils of a writer), on the television came a 2002 Hallmark Channel movie entitled “A Christmas Visitor”.

It featured a couple whose son had been killed in the Gulf War and had received notification from the US Army on Christmas Eve. Consequently, over the last twelve years, it seems this family had decided to forgo any Christmas celebrations.

In the movie, the only surviving sibling, this young man’s sister, was dealing with surgery to remove a lump in her breast. At the time of her brother’s death it seemed she couldn’t have been more than 10 years old.

In a tender moment, she revealed to her Mother how she always felt unloved growing up because their family, unlike her friends’ families, never celebrated Christmas after her brother John’s death. She believed that by not putting up a tree, decorating the house, etc. that her parents were indirectly telling her that they loved her brother more than her.

Even the mother in the movie embraced the daughter and suddenly realized how selfish she had been in her own overwhelming grief that she hadn’t taken into account how it would affect her daughter or husband.

When we have lost a significant person in our lives, especially a child or a spouse, our tendency as adults is to concentrate so much on our own grief and to dismiss the needs of the surviving children and family members.

If you are in this position now and you are struggling with whether to completely forego all the festivities of this season, please think twice. It’s very easy to just crawl under the covers and just want to disappear, but there may be others in your life who count on you to love them and nuture them and make life as ‘normal’ as it has been in the past.

No one can say this will be easy for you. It’s not. Actually, it’s probably one of the most selfless things you will ever do, especially if this is the first Christmas, Hanukkah or holiday season you are living through without that special someone.

But remember this, please…how you show love to those who are living, will go a long way to how your family survives this tragedy. Your surviving children, and perhaps your spouse, are screaming inside, “but I’m still alive…notice me…love me…look at me…pay attention to me…hold me…cuddle me…say nice things to me…give gifts to me…”

If you are either unsure or have already decided to not do Christmas, please reconsider. You don’t need to do all that you have in the past, but the very best start is to have a family meeting and let everyone express their feelings.

Once you have a clear understanding of what everyone feels, you’ll be able to rethink a more moderate strategy for what you can do and what you just can’t do. At least everyone will have a better sense of why you feel the way you do and they won’t feel so left out of the thinking process.

Christmas or Hanukkah might look a little different this year but it can still be celebrated.

Next post will look at alternative ways to do that…

Holidays, Military

On This Day: Honoring Veterans and Their Survivors

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On this noteworthy occasion of Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in Canada, I wish to acknowledge all the sacrifice of all those who have served in the military so that citizens, like myself, would have the ability to be free and safe.

How often we take for granted our security in this country. How often we forget to acknowledge that these amazing men and women have voluntarily, yes voluntarily, chose to go off to foreign lands and sometimes put themselves in harms way so that you and I could do what we do each and every day.

They give us the ability to have the freedom to choose how we wish to live our lives. Think about that for a moment. We get to choose what we do, how we speak about our government and it’s elected leaders, whether we act respectful or not, where we choose to live, how we wish to spend our money, etc.

Their sacrifice makes all that possible.

Yet there are some of these brave men and women who we will not be able to honor face to face any longer, as they have given the ultimate sacrifice. Instead we thank their widows and widowers, their bereaved parents and children. Theirs is a much different, yet difficult road. They grow up without their loved one near them to love and nuture them, comfort and console them.

One book which supports families after a military death is “Military Widow: A Survival Guide” written by two outstanding ladies, both grief and bereavement specialist, Joanne Steen and Regina Asaro.

I’m am so grateful for this book as it’s a long time coming. It was needed to be written as there is nothing else like it out there. It is so specific and gives practical and compassionate advice, laced with true-life stories of military families and their challenges after a loved one’s death.

If you are grieving a military death, I highly recommend your purchasing this book. Click here for details.

Meanwhile, always remember our military’s sacrifice for without them we would not know the freedoms we enjoy today.

Blessings to all.
Holidays, Military

To Always Remember Their Sacrifice

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Memorial Day, 2008

In America, today we honor the men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice by fighting in battles all around this globe, to keep our citizens free. Sometimes we forget that ours is an all volunteer military. We have no draft. We train these brave ones to kill the enemy so you and I can know that our existence in the United States is a safe one.

Yet, it is important to not only remember those killed, but the first-hand and second-hand survivors who are grieving as a result of those deaths.

If you consider any one person’s passing will have upward of 300 people who loved and cherished them, it is a staggering number of people who remember them today.Just think of their family members, friends, neighbors, the military, classmates, teammates, business colleagues, people they knew from church, synagogue, social circles, clubs, etc. And what about their parents’ and siblings’ friends who knew them. They are also affected.

So there is much I want to say here…

First, I’d like to address the grief of the spouse, parents, siblings, grandparents, children, other family members, friends and loved ones of a man or woman killed in the line of duty. Your loved one gave the ultimate sacrifice and every American citizen owes you a sincere thank you for enduring the pain you feel now, for the good of our citizens’ safety.

Secondly, are the needs of military families. Their spouses have been raising children on their own, with little support both financially or personally, and doing a great job at it as well. They struggle to make ends meet and it is beyond me how our Congress cannot make it easier on these active duty families.

They are going into credit card debt, as many citizens, just to survive. But they shouldn’t have to. Banks are foreclosing on homes, ruining credit ratings because credit cards haven’t been paid in a timely fashion. When you expect to be deployed for one tour, which turns into two and three tours, it sort of turns your life upside down.

It’s hard to worry about paying a credit card bill when your main mission today is staying alive and keeping those around you alive, all while in a foreign land. Do the people at these banks get it? Obviously not.

My solution…their debts should become frozen once they are deployed, not to gain a cent of interest or penalty nor become due again until six months after they’re home.

Exactly when will some Congressman or woman step up to the plate and make this right… Senator McCain – how about you?

And if this family experiences the death of their spouse in the line of duty, now they lose their homes, support systems, and more. They must leave the military bases and return to wherever they originally came. In the process they and their children lose their home, friends, classmates, neighbors, other military family’s support. They lose more than just their loved ones. Additionally, they lose income so it is now doubly hard for the surviving spouse to readjust to raising a family alone.

Next…the first hand survivors are also military; those who knew the soldier directly.

Prolonged deployments overseas only delay the grieving process. Wisdom says we must help these brave men and women achieve mental stability all along the way.

Yes, it is only natural that we repair their physical bodies, but we must treat their mental symptoms as well. Seeing multiple deaths during repeated tours overseas is something that stays with you. It is not easily released.

And when someone returns to the home they once knew, they are changed. And they need time to acclimate themselves to their old lives. One thing is certain – they are different now. They have seen too much and are not the same. How could they be?

This weekend I wish us to remember how difficult it must be to trade in a machine gun, grenade, and HumVee, back to a laptop, blackberry and IPOD. I can’t even imagine how that’s done.

And, lastly, second-hand survivors are the family members of these surviving military buddies who will come home, grieving their fellow soldiers’ deaths in combat, and their immediate family members here in the US are scrambling how best to help them through this grief, not to mention their need to acclimate themselves into society back here once again.

So I find it unconscionable that our elected officials do not make it a higher priority to have premier bereavement services available to the surviving families of the military personnel who have been killed and to every active duty soldier overseas and later, upon their return home, to serve them and their families as well.

Military death touches so many lives and we rarely acknowledge all the people affected. Let’s begin to better understand the domino effect of grief caused by war…and let’s effectively deal with it from the onset.