Christmas did go on for us that year. And yes, it was very different. The three of us pulled together as a family and developed new traditions to help face the day. For instance, we hung a picture of my husband in the Christmas tree, declaring him our “Christmas Star.” We also dedicated Christmas Eve as the day to honor him by making a visit to the cemetery. It was there that I presented each daughter with one of our wedding bands as a gift from both their father and me. We returned home for a quiet evening to reminisce about our favorite family times together. The tears flowed, at times uncontrollably, but in a very healing way.
Surprisingly, Christmas Day was quite pleasant. It was not filled with the heavy sadness or feelings of sorrow that I’d anticipated. Instead, it was filled with love and compassion. We invited our extended family and close friends to spend the day with us. During dinner, we exchanged stories of years gone by, many of them bringing smiles and laughter to everyone.
In reflection, I am thankful we found the courage to embrace Christmas that year. In doing so, we renewed our strength and courage to go on and live our lives as we were meant to. Two years later, my daughters and I were blessed to receive a new family, complete with a dad and three more children.
Today, we embrace Christmas as a way of celebrating not only those we are fortunate to have in our lives, but to also remember those we hold so dearly in our hearts.
If you are facing Christmas alone for the first time, I encourage you to reach out to someone you trust and share your feelings with them. Devote a time and place prior to Christmas Day in which you can openly honor your loved one and acknowledge your feelings. Finally, on Christmas Day, intentionally set your focus on family and friends who not only share in your loss, but who bring precious gifts of love and support to aid you in your healing journey.
You are not alone, although you may feel this way. Many people have been where you are, and we care deeply.
Janelle M. Breese Biagioni
My Father’s Voice
My father raised me mostly by example. He was a doctor who also had a farm in the Midwest on which he raised cattle, horses and hunting dogs. I learned by watching how to work; how to handle animals and the kinds of unforeseen events that are so frequent in the life of a doctor’s family.
My father took things as they came, dealt with them and, as he used to say when some obstacle had been overcome, “Let’s move right along.” He had a few precepts I was expected to live by, and he always referred to them by their combined initial letters: DL! DC! SDT! and DPB! They stood for Don’t Lie; Don’t Cheat; Slow Down and Think; and Don’t Panic, Bud! I was amazed as a boy how often he found occasion to say one or another of those things.
He thought animals were splendid teachers, and he taught me to watch them carefully. One winter a squirrel invaded our house around Thanksgiving. We never saw or heard it, but I found stashes of nuts hidden under the cushions of the couch and almost every chair. The fascinating thing is that the nuts were always one of a kind. Acorns in my father’s chair. Hickory nuts at one end of the sofa and almonds in their shells—stolen from the holiday bowl that my mother kept on the coffee table.
I thought the squirrel was very smart to sort out his larder that way. My dad said the squirrel was even smarter than I had imagined and gathered only one kind of nut at a time. And that would be much more efficient than gathering a mix and then having to sort them out.
That kind of teaching did not alter much even when I was a grown man, even to the day he died. I was thirty when he became ill on Christmas Eve. We buried him on the third of January, his coffin draped in an American flag. The United States soldier who received the folded flag from the bearers handed it to me without a word. I clutched it to my heart as my wife and I left that most sorrowful of places for the long, forlorn drive to the airport.
The world seemed darkened by his absence. There was an emptiness so great that at times I thought I could not bear it. At his funeral, the minister told me that all he had been to me still lived. He said if I listened I could hear what my father’s response would be to any concern I needed to bring him. But after I left the small country town where he lived and returned to the large city where I was making my way, I never once heard his voice. Never once. That troubled me deeply. When I was worried about leaving one job for another—something I would have talked over with my dad—I tried to imagine that we were sitting in his barn having one of our “life-talks,” as my mother used to call them. But there was only silence and the image of me alone, waiting and profoundly sad.
Although I worked in the city, my wife and I bought an old farmhouse on a few acres of land some forty miles away. It had a pond where I could teach my son to fish and a meadow where we could work our dog.
One day during the same dreadful winter that I lost my father, I set out with my young son to do a few errands. We drove out into the country to look at some antique dining-room chairs I was thinking of buying as a surprise for my wife. I said we’d be home by suppertime. We had gone a few miles when my son saw deer grazing just beyond the edge of a parking lot that belonged to our country church. I pulled in the lot, turned off the engine and let the car glide as close to the deer as I could without spooking them.
A buck and three does rummaged in the snow for grass and leaves. They occasionally raised their heads and took a long slow read of the air. They knew, of course, we were there. They just wanted to be certain they were safe.
We were as still as we could be and watched them for some time. When I took my son’s hand and turned around to leave, I saw a pall of smoke coming from under the hood of my car. We stopped in our tracks. Oh God, I thought, the engine is on fire. And I am alone with a child in the middle of winter in the middle of nowhere. I did not have a cell phone.
I told my son to stay where he was, and I went to the car to investigate. I opened the driver’s door, pulled the hood latch and went to the front of the car. Gingerly, I opened the hood. As soon as I did, I saw that the right front of the engine was aglow with fire, and smoke was coming out of it at a pretty good clip. I closed the hood without latching it down and went to where my son stood in the snow, excited and amazed.
“Daddy, is the car gonna blow up?”
“No. But I sure have to do something, and I don’t know what. . . .”
“Snow will put it out,” he said.
“Snow might crack a cylinder, too.” What could be the matter? I thought. Engines just don’t catch fire like that. My mind began to move irrationally. I would have to find a house along the road, call for help. I would have to call my wife, frighten her probably. There would be the expense of the tow and probably a new engine. Then as clearly as I ever heard it in my life, I heard my dad say, “DPB!“
I am still astonished that I was immediately calmed. The frantic racing of my mind ceased. I decided to see exactly what, in fact, was burning. I retrieved a stick from a little oak and went to the car, opened the hood and poked at the glowing red place on the engine. Coals fell from it, through to the ground. I could see then, sitting on the engine block in a perfect little circle—a small collection of acorns, cradled by the shape of the metal.
I laughed out loud. “Come here,” I said to my son. “Look, a squirrel stowed its treasure in our car. And when the engine got hot, his acorns got roasted.”
I knocked the acorns and the rest of the glowing coals off the engine, closed the hood, put my son in his car seat and got in beside him.
When we drove away to finish our errand, I knew—for the first time since my dad died—that I could get on with my life. For on that snowy day in the parking lot of our country church, I discovered that his voice was still in my heart, and his lessons would be with me forever.
Walker Meade
Missing Pa
Honest listening is one of the best medicines we can offer the dying and the bereaved.
Jean Cameron
One day my four-year-old son Sam told me he’d seen his babysitter crying because she’
d broken up with her boyfriend. “She was sad,” he explained. “I’ve never been sad,” Sam added. “Not ever.”
It was true. Sam’s life was happy in large part because of his relationship with my father. As Sam told everyone, Pa Hood was more than a grandfather to him—they were buddies.
There’s a scene in the movie Anne of Green Gables in which Anne wishes aloud for a bosom friend. Watching that one day, Sam sat up and declared, “That’s me and Pa—bosom friends forever and ever.”
My father described their relationship the same way. When I went out of town one night a week to teach, it was Pa in his red pickup truck who’d meet Sam at school and take him back to his house. There they’d play pirates and knights and Robin Hood.
They even dressed alike: pocket T-shirts, baseball caps and jeans. They had special restaurants they frequented, playgrounds where they were regulars, and toy stores where Pa allowed Sam to race up and down the aisles on motorized cars.
Sam had even memorized my father’s phone number and called him every morning and night. “Pa,” he would ask, clutching the phone, “can I call you ten hundred more times?” Pa always said yes and answered the phone every time with equal delight.
Then my father became ill. In the months he was hospitalized for lung cancer, I worried about how Sam would react to Pa’s condition: the needle bruises, the oxygen tubes, his weakened state. When I explained to Sam that seeing Pa so sick might scare him, he was surprised. “He could never scare me,” Sam said.
Later I watched adults approach my father’s hospital bed with trepidation, unsure of what to say or do. But Sam knew exactly what was right: hugs and jokes, as always.
“Are you coming home soon?” he’d ask.
“I’m trying,” Pa would tell him.
When my dad died, everything changed for me and Sam. Not wanting to confront the questions and feelings my father’s death raised, I kept my overwhelming sadness at bay. When well-meaning people asked how I was doing, I’d give them a short answer and swiftly change the subject.
Sam was different, however. For him, wondering aloud was the best way to understand.
“So,” he’d say, settling in his car seat, “Pa’s in space, right?” Or, pointing at a stained-glass window in church, he’d ask, “Is one of those angels Pa?”
“Where’s heaven?” Sam asked right after my father died.
“No one knows exactly,” I said. “Lots of people think it’s in the sky.”
“No,” Sam said, shaking his head, “it’s very far away. Near Cambodia.”
“When you die,” he asked on another afternoon, “you disappear, right? And when you faint, you only disappear a little. Right?”
I thought his questions were good. The part I had trouble with was what he always did afterward: He’d look me right in the eye with more hope than I could stand and wait for my approval or correction or wisdom. But in this matter my fear and ignorance were so large that I’d grow dumb in the face of his innocence.
Remembering Sam’s approach to my father’s illness, I began to watch his approach to grief. At night he’d press his face against his bedroom window and cry, calling out into the darkness, “Pa, I love you! Sweet dreams!” Then, after his tears stopped, he’d climb into bed, somehow satisfied, and sleep. I, however, would wander the house all night, not knowing how to mourn.
One day in the supermarket parking lot, I saw a red truck like my father’s. For an instant I forgot he had died. My heart leapt as I thought, Dad’s here!
Then I remembered and succumbed to an onslaught of tears. Sam climbed onto my lap and jammed himself between me and the steering wheel.
“You miss Pa, don’t you?” he asked.
I managed to nod.
“You have to believe he’s with us, Mommy,” he said. “You have to believe that.”
Too young to attach to a particular ideology, Sam was simply dealing with grief and loss by believing that death does not really separate us from those we love. I couldn’t show him heaven on a map or explain the course a soul might travel. But he’d found his own way to cope.
Recently while I was cooking dinner, Sam sat by himself at the kitchen table, quietly coloring in his Spider Man coloring book. “I love you, too,” he said.
I laughed and said, “You only say ‘I love you, too’ after someone says ‘I love you’ first.”
“I know,” Sam said. “Pa just said, ‘I love you, Sam,’ and I said, ‘I love you, too.’” He kept coloring.
“Pa just talked to you?” I asked.
“Oh, Mommy,” Sam said, “he tells me he loves me every day. He tells you, too. You’re just not listening.”
Again, I have begun to take Sam’s lead. I have begun to listen.
Ann Hood
Originally published in Parenting magazine
THE FAMILY CIRCUS®
By Bil Keane
“. . . and say hi to our grandfather
who art in heaven, too.”
Reprinted with permission from Bil Keane.
What Death Has Taught Me
My phone rang at 7:20 A.M., July 23, 2000. As I picked it up, a feeling of foreboding came over me, as usually happens when the phone rings at an odd hour. It was my father . . . there’s been an accident . . . it’s Joe . . . it’s bad . . . he’s been killed. Joe is my nephew, the son of my sister. He was killed in a car accident . . . and so the journey begins.
Joe turned eighteen on February 20, 2000. He was looking forward to heading off to university the following year, the first in our family to do so. He was going to take kinesiology, and he was going to be amazing.
For one year, I searched for answers, as many do when they lose someone they love. For one year, I was sad with a pit of emptiness in my stomach. Oh, sometimes on the outside I would appear to be okay, but inside the pit was always there.
Then one day in May 2001 . . . I realized I was on a journey. What I realized is below:
When you lose someone you love, your soul moves to another “place.” This “place” is shared only by others who have also lost someone they love. You know they’re “there” by the look in their eyes when they tell you how sorry they are for your loss. They have traveled the “journey” you are about to travel and know the emptiness you feel. This “place” is where your life seems to stand still for a while. You are still physically here, yet you sense you’re just not “here” right now.
To the observer, your life is carrying on. Inside, however, those who have been “there” know you’re still on a journey for a time. You think it must be time for you to “come back” now, and for short periods you do. Then some thing, some place, some song sends you on “journey” again.
Those who have been “there” can journey with you for a time if you let them. Company on a journey is sometimes helpful, and sometimes you must journey alone.
The road on your journey has been much traveled. There are hills to climb, corners to go around and potholes to get through. Flat tires to repair, and tanks gone empty that need refilling. Most welcomed on the journey are the straight stretches. They allow you to coast easily and build up again to approach the next hill with a bit more ease.
As time goes on, the hills become smaller, and the road on your journey does lead you “home” again. At first for short periods of time, and eventually for much longer times. It is a different “home” now and a different “you” now. You will have traveled far and experienced much, and your eyes . . . your eyes will speak of your journey. You’ll be ready then to guide another, look in their eyes and say, “I am so sorry for your loss.”
“Death” has taught me many things. Things that, if listed, would fill pages time wouldn’t permit to be read. For today, it’s taught me:
To hold onto my children a little longer and a little tighter when we hug.
To hold onto my friends a little longer and a little tighter when we hug.
That I’m not being silly telling my children I love them every day.
To hug my children even when they don’t seem to want to be hugged (like in public!).
To treasure bedtime chats, stories of friends and sharing inner thoughts.
That fingerprints on the wall are dirt to one and treasures to another.
That I’ll not wait to do things, and I’ll not wait to say things.
To be happy today in the journey.
That life is short and meant to be experienced and celebrated every day that we’re here.
That we have a choice in the death of those we love, to honor their death with anger or to honor it with our life and living it to the fullest.
Most importantly, death has taught me to live.
Barb Kerr
Keep Your Fork
For what is it to die, but to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? And when the Earth has claimed our limbs, then we shall truly dance.
Kahlil Gibran
The sound of Martha’s voice on the other end of the telephone always brought a smile to Brother Jim’s face. She was not only one of the oldest members of the congregation, but one of the most faithful. Aunt Martie, as all the children called her, just seemed to ooze faith, hope and love wherever she went.
This time, however, there seemed to be an unusual tone to her words.
“Preacher, could you stop by this afternoon? I need to talk with you.”
“Of course. I’ll be there around three. Is that okay?”
As they sat facing each other in the quiet of her small living room, Jim learned the reason for what he sensed in her voice. Martha told him that her doctor had just discovered a previously undetected tumor.