How do you deal with the holiday rush when you suffer a loss during the season? You take it one day at a time after you come to grips with the fact that its here again. We have not reached Thanksgiving in 2019 and every department store is having black Friday sales since the first weekend in November. What’s up with that? Seriously, tell me if I am wrong. It went from me asking my grandchildren what character they wanted to be for Halloween to the most wonderful time of the year. Every storefront is sparkling with Christmas lights and decorations. It almost feels like we are just skipping November moving straight into December. The truth of the matter is I can care less.
The holidays have not been joyous for me in a very long time. In fact, I still cringe as it approaches even though I have learned how to deal with it for the sake of my grandbabies. It is not their fault that their Grammie is sort of a scrooge. They are the only reason I put on a brave face and muster some form of holiday cheer. Seriously, I don’t shop during the holidays. It lost its luster for me when I lost my mother in the midst of the holiday season. How do you deal with the holiday rush if you have suffered loss during the holidays?
It sucks when you lose someone near and dear to you during the holiday rush. It will forever change how you view the holidays. Of course, it becomes your burden to bear as you cannot take your grief out on others. Now, I am not a counselor of any sort. I can only speak to my truth as someone who has experience in this area. For years I conditioned myself to despise Christmas. This holiday season will be the 10th anniversary of my mother’s passing away seventeen days shy of Christmas and I still struggle with it. As the eldest of her children, it was my job to make sure that I took care of her until then the end as well as guide my younger adult siblings in the right direction.
In fact, it wasn’t until three years later in 2012 that I actually had my first good cry about losing my mother. I remember it as if it were yesterday, I was at work and my first grandchild was born. I went to pick-up the phone to call my mother when I realized that I couldn’t because she wasn’t going to answer. Talking to my mother every day from my place of business was a ritual. One spring day, I was awaiting word of the arrival of my grandson. Once my son called, told me everybody was okay and healthy, I hung up with him and automatically picked-up the phone and started dialing 718-868-4458. That was my mother’s number for the better part of thirty-two years. All of sudden, as I said, when the reality set in, at my desk, a sinking feeling came over me and I immediately got up and rushed to the ladies’ room where a flood of tears erupted. It was the first time that I allowed myself to lose control.
Years later in 2016 something happened, my grandchildren started asking about my mother. It made me angry. I have kept the relationship with my mother to myself for so long that I felt like these three little people were trying to take her away from me. Of course, I knew that wasn’t healthy because they loved me as I loved them and only wanted to know what happened to her. It took a while but I had to come up with a solution to allow my grandchildren in without letting go of my relationship with my mother.
It took me seven years to deal with losing my mother during the holiday rush. It took having three curious grandbabies for me to understand that I needed to stop shunning the holiday season for my loss. As a therapeutic exercise, I wrote a book about my relationship with my mother, her demise, and my feelings about it. Turns out that my account although different from others, resonated with many who have taken the time to read the book How I Wish I Had My Mother – A Daughters Story. It doesn’t take away the fact that I still miss her with every passing day, but it helps me to speak of her often some days with a tear and others with a chuckle.
My mother passed away in December of 2009 from melanoma, in recognition of the 10th anniversary for every sale in the month of December 2019, I will donate $1.00 from every copy of How I Wish I Had My Mother – A Daughters Story digital or paperback book to the Melanoma Foundation. I am here to say that getting through the holiday rush when you have suffered a loss during the holiday season is never going to be easy, but it can be done without bringing everyone around you down.