The holidays can be hard for so many of us who’ve experienced the death of a loved one. During a season that focuses on family and tradition, it’s no wonder it can be painful when someone we love is missing.
Funeral services aren’t the only places we grieve. Grief can be a life long process.
If we listen close in the moments of sadness when grief overtakes us, we’re often given tiny gifts from our loved ones that come in the form of new wisdom or opportunities to grow or reminders of the love we shared.
If you struggle this time of year, know that you aren’t alone. Even a professional eulogy writer; someone who helps say goodbye with eulogy writing services and how to write a eulogy for a living, still has moments of grief during the holidays. My mom died many years ago but still every year withour fail, at some point during the hustle and bustle, the pain of her death hits me unexpectedly. It seems to come up out of no where. Some years it’s hearing a song in a store. Other years it’s a memory that comes up with one of my daughters. Some times it hits me like this year, as I’m hanging her ornaments on my Christmas tree.
I always pause and let the memories come; along with a really good cry. Be gentle with yourself this holiday season.
We grieve because we loved.
“Are you afraid of dying, mom?” I asked holding in my own fear and emotion at finding the courage to ask her a question like this.
Death talk was off limits but I was struggling with trying to get her to prepare for her death and make plans for my sister, Mary who was living with her. Mary has a developmental disability and my mom was her sole caregiver at the time. My mom had battled cancer so many times, but had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Although she opted not to know the prognosis; I believe deep down, she knew she was going to die this time.
We were alone driving down Church St in Elmira and I had somehow gotten up the courage to ask her if she was afraid.
I already knew the answer. She was terrified of dying. She used to blame it on my dad. Nonetheless her terror of death was palpable and always hard to understand alongside her deep faith so I decided to ask.
“Are you afraid of dying, mom?”
“What will people say about me when l’m gone?” her glassy brown eyes pooling with tears that never seemed to find their way down her cheek.
It had never even occurred to me that she’d be worried about that.
“What? What will people say about you?” I managed to ask.
And as tears streamed down my own face I told her people will say you were a devoted mother who raised 8 children and did the best she could with what she had. People will say that you were a strong woman who battled cancer for over 20 years.
I continued on for a long time telling her all the qualities there are to love about her. It had never really occurred to me that deep down, my mom doubted her own goodness.
She likely doubted it for a million reasons, me being one of them. Back then, I tended to point out her every shortcoming. In the luxury of hindsight, I think I projected my own fears on her. I saw in her, much of which I myself hated and struggled with, in myself; namely fear. It was so much easier back then to focus on her fears and mistakes rather than face my own.
What will people say about me when I’m gone?
I often think and write about my relationship with my mom. You’d think I would have completed the cycle of grief by now, right? But no. It continues in various forms as I myself age and come to terms with my own mortality, my relationships with my own daughters, my own fears, my own mistakes.
Someone once told me that my mom will love me in all the ways I need after she’s gone. That’s been so true. Her death and my reflection on our relationship often feel like tiny gifts from her that come as moments of clarity, moments of comfort and moments of growth.
Today I’m reminded in the quietest of moments, that just as my mom was not the sum of her mistakes. I too am not the sum of mine. None of us are.