Holidays, 2019

08 Jan 2020 2 Comments

by Denise in Death, Death of a Child, Grief, Holidays, Lonlieness Tags: , , , , , ,

Memory’s a tricky thing. Unreliable. But it’s what we rely on to tell our stories and who are we without our stories? On January 1st I felt like shit. It had everything to do with the crash and burn of the holidays. Plus having to celebrate without Philip. But that’s not how I’m remembering the holidays of the past seven years, since he died. I’m pretty sure I would say I felt okay around Christmas because it meant I’d being see family and friends. It’s a warm time of year. It soothes the pain of loss because there’s more people around. It’s the season of love.

Is that true? I wrote a post on Christmas Day 2015 which pretty much said that, so I have felt that way. But so many of us struggle this time of year because we think we’re supposed to feel something we don’t. I haven’t recorded every Christmas of the past seven years so I’m not sure what they were like for me. Of course, since I drank when Philip died and started smoking weed sometime after that, I’ve not had a completely sober holiday experience in a good long while. So I want to write about what this has been like.

I have been overwhelmed and resistant. I bought and wrapped everyone’s presents, made six kinds of cookies, chocolate mousse, caramel cake. I even brought my baking stuff to the city to bake with my friend Cindy, who moved there last year. She insisted and I resisted but in the end it was the best thing I could’ve done. Natalie came along and working with the two of them around instead of in my lonely, cramped kitchen turned out to be the best day of the season.

This is the first year I didn’t put up a tree and I am still glad for it. Natalie usually buys our tree, but the thought of dragging my decorations from the garage to my apartment then dealing with a mess of pine needles that I’d be sweeping up until August made me cringe. Even now I’m balking at having to bring my wrapping material down to the garage but I have nowhere to leave it other than my living room.

So how else was this holiday season? The doing was nearly intolerable. I had to hold my hand every step of the way to try to soothe my ragged self. I wanted to see my family, I even looked forward to the drive to Staten Island from New Jersey to my brother’s house on Christmas Eve. It was all the steps in between that got me. I can’t remember ever being this anxious and edgy.  The grief – the goddamn lonely grief. There are a lot of adjectives I can attach to “grief” but “lonely” is the most potent. I ache with a loneliness that cries out, what is this all for? I ache with a loneliness that makes me want to vomit, which I’m no stranger to, which I’ve given in to a couple times these last few weeks, which I have not done for a long, long time. I am still searching for ways to cope.

I love winter, I say. But do I? It’s hard enough for me to go out. The cold biting at me makes it worse. And January/February are feeling like a long void which spring is not going to relieve. January is Philip’s birthday, February is when he died. In the past I’ve felt safe in these months, like the joy of his birth and the tragedy of his death brought me closer to him. Today all I’m feeling is scared. Today I’m feeling like I have to go it alone. I am his mother. How can anything, anyone possibly help? Of course other people have lost children. But it’s not like having a support group where we can all meet and “identify” with each other’s helplessness and so maybe get through it together. It doesn’t work that way with death. People have lost children, but they haven’t lost Philip. And I say that knowing so many people feel the loss of him, too – but each mother and child relationship is unique. My grief can’t be shared, it can only be held. And it is the loneliest place to be.

© 2020 Denise Smyth

Advertisement

Mine to Lose

29 Dec 2019 6 Comments

by Denise in Coming Out, Death, Death of a Child, Grief, Holidays, Lonlieness, Spirituality Tags: , , , ,

I need a spiritual solution. And I don’t mean in a come-to-Jesus kind of way because while I believe in the miracle of Him, it’s not a help in my day-to-day.

I recently went to a meditation class. I think I’m more drawn to the idea of Eastern philosophy than the actual practice of it. I will say that when I went into the class I was feeling blue, and teared up when I was asked (as were all the participants) to say a bit about why I was there. But I did felt calm at the end of it. Of course, the whole time I was supposed to be meditating and paying attention to my breath, I was thinking about how I actually finally wrote a blog post and WTF did I write and all the things I needed to do at work and how many of the Christmas gifts I bought I should return because I overdid as usual and yeah, all the things people who meditate struggle with. Except when it was over people were truly moved by their experience and I was thinking, well, it was okay but what the heck did I miss? I didn’t go somewhere deep and mystical. Did you ever have that, when you’re in a group of people all experiencing the same thing and you feel like everyone gets it except you but you act like you do because surely there must be something wrong with you if you didn’t?

I truly want to feel better. So often I feel both wounded and empty. My comfort in my grief – if it can be called comfort – was finding the place inside where I could write from. It’s not so easy to find my way any more. Where did that disappear to? It can’t be that I lost it, it must be that I’m too closed down to access it, right? I’m still the person who wrote those 140 posts here, right? I can’t have changed into someone thoughtless, wordless…right?

’Tis the season, though. The time that makes things harder for so many. While grieving Philip, I’ve taken comfort these last years during the holidays, from buying gifts to share to knowing I’d be with friends and family, as if the glow that’s Christmas could actually warm my heart instead of break it. Not so this year, and a lot of this has to do with K. We were together last year and now we’re not. I bet that sounds almost romantic. It isn’t. Because the truth of it is I was already pulling away from her. Whether or not I spent Christmas day with her is something I can’t remember. I know I did not spend Christmas Eve with her because I dared not invite her to join in with my family because she was my partner and while everyone knew I was with a woman, no one approved. At least, my mother disapproved. She hung up the phone angry and disgusted when I told her, then called my brother sobbing, And when I’d told my brother about K, I was met with a tepid “that’s okay,” but he let me know he was sure glad it wasn’t one of his daughters bringing him such news.

Telling my family might’ve sounded like I got the worst of it out of the way but it wasn’t. Next would’ve required being clear that where I was invited, K was invited. I never got that far. K has a big, sprawling, welcoming family who saw each other often, but not me. My family met on holidays and when last Christmas Eve rolled around – the holiday I always spend at my brother’s –  I said nothing. K and I didn’t even discuss it. We just continued like it was any old visit without her to my family. And while I’m not saying this is why we broke up, there is never any exact “why” to a break up. There are the million dings and dints to the thing that’s whole until it’s whole no longer and it breaks and cracks into pieces that can be mended or shards that splinter irrevocably and it is looking to me like right now, for her, there is no going back.

And I’m left asking myself if it was worth it. Because all those people that I was so concerned about have had their holidays the way they wanted, spent with the people they wanted to spend them with and I am here pining for what had only been mine to lose.

© 2019 Denise Smyth