Why Holidays Give This Widow Anxiety
Holidays for widows and for everyone with complex grief is a bitch…no, they’re a son-of-a-bitch, which is supposedly worse but having been a bitch myself on multiple occasions, I’m not sure how, and since I never met my son, I have no basis for comparison.
While I can’t speak for every widow — and probably not the jolly widower I met last night who waxed poetic about how his wife was the love of his life and how he’d had decades of a perfect like with the perfect woman — the holidays are a legit kick to the babymaker.
Those I’ve encountered would just as soon avoid them or reinvent them in the form of roasting one’s self (in lieu of a turkey) in Antigua for a week. The challenge we face is in telling our expectant families who didn’t lose their partner that we really don’t want to participate…like, seriously, can we just skip it?
For those with families who truly understand grief having experienced it as a unit (such as my late husband’s mother, father, siblings, and in-law), coming together for the holidays can be bittersweet, but it can provide a balm to the searing fire of grief and loss. Likewise, they may all understand the desire to skip it and spend a week in Antigua (**packs suitcase**).
Memories & The Way We Were
For the rest of us, the holidays light up every emotional nerve and prick us with perpetual reminders of loss and of what was. People enjoy the holidays because it’s like stepping back in time. The holidays return us to memories hued in sepia. For those who love the holidays, these are fond memories. I remember being nine-years-old and decorating the tree with excessive tinsel (naturally all in one place) and watching Home Alone while playing Christmas music and eating Dominos pepperoni pizza. I aspire to recreate that with my own children (minus the tinsel).
For Thanksgiving, we used to go to our Oma’s house and eat and then…okay as kids and teens, be bored, and then leave. There’s a photo of my brother and me during our teenage years with our hands shielding our faces as we walk the fence line in front of her house as we exit. My brother and I who are the same age distance as Lillianne and Jude would’ve been had he lived, were best friends…totally in sync for years.
For the years I was married, the holidays were filled with trips across state lines to visit both families…a little stress at figuring out the logistics of who we’d see and when, but ultimately a great time. Soon after we were married, we made babies, and while that complicated our journeys more (“won’t it be nice when people can come to our house for the holidays?” we would say, looking forward to a future that never manifested) we dutifully schlepped to the matriarchal homes of our respected grandmothers and made memories accordingly.
Now, I have three children, and going to the respective homes alone is a searing reminder of the thread of memories cruelly severed before anyone was ready. I cannot explain why this hurts so much. Objectively, I know that it’s all part of life, death is. Loss is. But even as I write this, I’m fighting back tears. Rarely do I cry. Like most widows, I’ve been to therapy and have done work on myself to function happily and healthily after death.
Perhaps it’s the dynamic. If I do as Dr. Nicole LaPera says and “listen to my body”, when I think about spending time during the holidays with my late husband’s family, I don’t feel anxious because they see me because they, too, are raw with grief.
My own parents, while extremely supportive when Sean was sick and who love the girls, do not understand why I’ve “changed” (a natural result of being broken to pieces and having to reassemble one’s self, I assure you). Based on a “conversation” my dad and I had the day I closed on my house in June 2021, he has no idea who I am nor does he care. The “conversation” literally ended with a cold dismissal from him (it was that day I realized my father has an avoidant personality and came to see some of my relationship choices and reactions more clearly). On my first Mother’s Day, my mother suggested they adopt my children. I have no idea why, but it would have been preferable if she’d have just slammed the hot iron into my forehead. It was a blow that still fills me with sick emotions when I allow myself to remember it.
I have dozens of examples like this, so suffice to say, the idea of going to their house with just my Oma and my parents (my childless, unmarried brother, if I haven’t mentioned, is in Huntsville and is leaning on “how much he works” and “he just came into town a few weeks ago”), my throat literally closes up, and I want to claw myself out of my own body.
My current SO says, “Just don’t go,” when I want to vent my anxiety (**closes vent**). Yes, and if I didn’t have children who don’t understand any of these currents who love their grandparents and who want to see them, I would be in Antigua drinking rum out of a coconut served to me by some bronzed, shirtless washboard named Raul, but that’s not the case.
During 2021, I delved into mindfulness and meditation practices in earnest. I more recently have started reading works by the stoics, a move prompted by finally picking up Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way.
These are my take-aways:
- Practice gratitude. I have mentioned a lot of grievances here, but I have mentioned little about gratitude. If I’m going to look backward, I can’t discolor the image with only what is most recent and is most painful; though, that’s normal as we remember what’s painful more acutely, so we can avoid it in the future. That’s just survival instinct, and while mine is in overdrive, I would be remiss for not recalling that my parents watched the girls, showed up every time we had an emergency call for help when Sean was sick, gave us my Dad’s truck, which allowed us to not have a car note, and paid our mortgage for the year Sean was sick with cancer.
- Be present. Anxiety is just a projection into the future. If I look ahead, the holidays are distressing. While preparation mentally and emotionally is important, living in the future or the past are detrimental. In other words, I can and should strategize and contemplate scenarios and prepare myself for battle, but I should equally not dwell in what may or may not happen or in what has happened.
- I should exercise compassion, which I have done. As a child, I acknowledge that my father’s abusive upbringing made him the way that he was (angry, emotionally absent, etc.). As an adult, I see that my mom’s own childhood trauma (alcoholic father, single mother, divorce, etc.) impacted her as well…but, my parents did their best. They loved us, and our childhoods, as most do, left us with what Dr. LaPera calls little-t traumas. In other words, I wasn’t sexually abused or left to fend for myself. I didn’t witness my parents’ divorce or abuse drugs or beat one another or even swear (other than that one time on the way home from church when my dad called us “little shits”). None the less, without a deep dive, you can’t heal it. Thus, I understand that my parents did and do their best.
- Acknowledge the things that you cannot change, but recognize what you can. I cannot change how my parents regard me now or their empathy or sympathy toward my situation nor can I change my SO’s, for that matter. Instead, I can handle how I react. As my SO points out, I could choose to go or not to go tomorrow (or to have made my cancellation declaration more clear from the onset as I know that boundaries surrounding my mental health are important).
We All Have Choices
By choosing to not go, the anxiety disappears. I don’t fear shameful commentary, nor do I feel obligated to make banal conversation or to be asked why I still haven’t printed photos. I do not have to talk about my late husband or fight back tears or hear about how God heals all if I do cry (thank you, I’m aware, but unless he’s going to pop down from heaven right now and pump me up with some Ambrosia, then I’m allowed to feel my f — king feelings). It IS okay to cry, FFS. But I’d rather not.
On the other hand, my daughters deserve to make memories. They deserve their own highlight reel of magic and moments that will keep them warm as the holidays approach each year. I want them to remember with fondness the food they will eat and warmth they will feel. I want them to remember the excitement of coming home tomorrow and going to bed waiting for the elves to come.
They were too young when their dad died to remember much about what we used to do together, and while I will carve out new traditions for us, my mom has already hyped them up about this Thanksgiving at her house and the catfish she will make…and while I have already said I’d rather just skip it and we can all get together for Christmas when my brother is in town, her offer was that if I don’t feel I can come, then I don’t have to…but I’m not going to just drop my kids off and not stay.
And So…
That’s one widow’s story as to why the holidays are complicated. But I will do the right thing for my children and will show up. I will remind myself of what I can and cannot choose and that, as one sign holder pointed out at the 12K…you chose to do this. After that I’m going to start crowdfunding for my emotional recovery trip to Antigua. Message me for my Venmo handle (insert silly face here).
In all seriousness, the people in our lives are temporary. We never know our time. The universe has its plan, and we have to trust it. We can implement every stoic truism known to man, but that still does not invalidate nor remove anxiety, depression, grief, or pain from the human experience. There is only one way through the fire…just ask your turkey. But hopefully, like the turkey, we will emerge from the fire less raw, tougher (sorry, most of us can’t cook turkey), richer and more complex, and ultimately, safe to join in at the table of life.
