The grief that I feel during Christmastime is a welcome reminder of love and loss
I have learned much about death and grieving in the past three years, and Christmastime — never much of a religious holiday for me or my family — has become a time of reliving deep grief for my father and me, bound together as we are by two harsh losses in a short period.
In April 2019, I lost my mother, Cynthia, to a heart attack. It was quick and unexpected, and I did not get a chance to say goodbye to her. I was 29, and she was only 56. We were both too young in so many ways. Within my extended family, it was just Mom, Dad and I who lived in California, so our holiday celebrations were inherently private and dear to us. In addition, all three of our birthdays bookend the holiday season, with Mom’s just a week before Christmas.
My mom was a paralegal, a teacher and the president of my fan club. She was always willing to pick up the phone and dole out comfort or common sense as needed. My mother worked hard her entire life to provide a better situation for herself than what she was given, and she instilled in me an insatiable thirst for knowledge. I always knew that if I needed something, Mom would find a way to make it happen.
Books were our family’s love language, and we never had enough. She taught me how to write and how to research, and with her background in law, she taught me how to make my argument while understanding and respecting the other side. Not once did she waver in her faith in me or my ambitions.
I miss her every single day.
Then, in January of this year, I held the hand of my paternal grandfather, Edward, as he died from pancreatic cancer. It’s one of the more devastating forms of cancer, with a survival rate of just 1%. He declined chemotherapy or other treatment and opted to let the cancer take its course.
Grandpa Ed was an internationally recognized peace activist. He taught me the importance of volunteering, being responsible for one’s neighbors and the world, and standing up for what one believes in no matter the personal cost.
He was arrested multiple times at nuclear protests and was often a thorn in the side of local bureaucrats. Every night for nearly 20 years, he drove his red Volkswagen Bus to the Benton County courthouse in Corvallis, Ore., and protested against the U.S. government’s involvement in foreign wars. He held those daily peace vigils in rain or snow or sun, and when he died, more than 100 of his friends and fellow protesters joined my father, my aunt and me for a memorial vigil outside the courthouse. The Oregon Legislature declared his next birthday, April 7, 2021, “a day of action for peace.”
The disease spread through his body rapidly over the holidays last year, and he died just six weeks after his diagnosis, which we had received on my mother’s birthday. But even in the midst of a pandemic, his two children, his grandchild (me) and his niece were able to gather from around the world to be at his bedside and provide palliative care through the last month of his life.
We spent the holiday season last year saying “Goodbye” and “I love you” in a million different ways.
‘The ball never really goes away’
They were two very different deaths, but both taught me how to continue living and loving, even when there seems to be no path or reason to move forward. Grief can be overwhelming, especially during the holiday season, and especially when it’s still so new that you are grasping for any dry land to cling to as waves of loss ceaselessly crash over you.
When my mother died, and again with the death of my grandfather, I noticed that there are two types of people in this world: those who have experienced loss and those who have not. In the early days of my grief, I sought out the former for comfort. We were all part of the same, horrible club now, and I found that there is an inherent empathy within that group that cannot be taught — only earned.
As a member of that club now, I try to reach out to people I see going through it for the first time. One of the concepts that has helped me most is the theory of the ball and the box. I share it often.
Originally tweeted by a young Canadian woman named Lauren Herschel in the days after Christmas 2017, the analogy compares grief to a bouncing ball inside a box. Inside this box is a button, and every time the ball hits that button, the grief is as difficult as the very first day. In the beginning, right after the loss, the ball is huge. You can hardly move without the ball hitting that button inside. It is unrelenting grief and loss that feels as though it will never end.
But over time, and with help, the ball lessens in size. You can begin to function again from day to day. It is not a linear path — sometimes the ball is huge, and sometimes it is small — but whenever it hits that button, the grief is newly raw all over again.
“For most people,” Herschel explained, “the ball never really goes away.”
Grief can strike at any time, even years away from a loss. The smallest thing can remind me of my mother. Sometimes it’s as simple as using a branded pen from her old office; sometimes it’s hearing Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” which we would sing at the top of our lungs in her car. And every night before bed, I pull the chain of the lamp near my bedside; its warm glow through a fringed lampshade casts the same light that shone in my grandfather’s living room for decades. There are different boxes and different balls for each loss.
I often share this concept with people I see experiencing loss and grief because nearly three years down the road, I often find myself more able to comfort than needing to be comforted. My Christmas wish for you is that you also reach this place someday, and I hope you remember that it is possible to simultaneously grieve and find joy in the holiday season at the same time.
I am crying a little right now as I write these words. The memories have made the ball large again. Birthdays, holidays and anniversaries never fail to increase the size of my grief, too. But I am grateful for the blessings of life, full of love and loss. Christmastime, with all its memories and anniversaries, fills me with gratitude for what I have, what I have had, and all the wonderful things yet to come.
