A Broken Christmas Ritual

I can't tell you why but for the first time in many years, I didn't place a Christmas wreath on my husband's marker at the cemetery.

 

I thought about it.  I was going to do it.  But then I never did get around to it.

 

I'm hoping that this doesn't make me a bad person.

I'm really hoping it just makes me a conflicted human being dealing with life the best way I know.

Every Christmas since he died 10 years ago, I have made a personal ceremony out of placing a large Christmas wreath with a big red bow on his grave.  It was a healing ritual that made me feel good and I thought it also was a ritual that would let him know that I had not forgotten about him at Christmas.

 

But this year it all felt very different.  I couldn't bring myself to buy the wreath and take it to his grave.  I didn't want to drive my car anywhere near the cemetery. 

I don't understand it but I think it has something to do with the trickery of grief.; how you think you are on solid footing and then you're not.  I used to emotionally bounce all over the place in my new grief of the first few years and since then, I have been working hard to go forward with my life, stay positive and embrace happiness.  Yet my feelings shifted this Christmas.  Out of nowhere, a powerful surge of conflicting emotions washed over me.  I have to say that having this happen is truly a bummer because I don't like being sucked back into those feelings again.

Honestly, I think one reason I couldn't go near the cemetery is I just get tired of grieving and missing him and reminiscing and being the widow.  I find it hard now to think of my husband actually occupying the physical space that makes up his grave and to me it's more likely that he, as a spiritual being, hangs out wherever he wants with whom ever he wants anytime that he wants.

  

Still, my inner voice says to me that it was almost as if I was annoyed that he wasn't here this Christmas!!  You would think I would have felt this way the first Christmas after he died instead of the tenth Christmas!

But grief isn't linear and it certainly isn't logical right?
 

#beerbottles

I'm at the cemetary picking up the weatherbeaten Christmas wreath I placed on my husband's marker weeks ago and I spy four empty Heinekein bottles lying in a puddle of water on a nearby marker.

My, my...What do we have here?

I'd like to think it was someone's birthday and four friends or relatives came to celebrate, sing and raise one for their family member or friend.

Or maybe one person came and had a good time drinking four beers while talking and singing to their loved one.

Either way the empty beer bottles don't bother me at all.  At another location, people would regard the Heinekein bottles as trash and would be annoyed to find them laying the grass as litter.  Not me.  Other than creating work for the people who work at the cemetary, I like that people have been here, drinking beer, visiting someone they miss a lot and continuing with their rituals.

It is possible that a person or people were here drinking beer because they missed this person so much that they wanted to numb their sorrow.  I totally get why you would want to do that.  It is soooo tempting yet so short sighted.  I remember the day of my husband's funeral.  All I really wanted to do was drink martinis all day until I couldn't feel anything.  But numbing yourself won't get you anywhere.  It doesn't help you heal or work to get you in a good place in the long run.  When you come out of your haze, nothing's changed.  The person is still gone and the pain is still there, waiting for you to work it out.

Whether we like it or not, loss is a part of life and grief is a totally natural response to loss.  When people loose someone they love very much, they don't know what to do when their special days come along.  Some decide they will be closest to the person at the cemetary so they go to the cemetary to be close with the person, to hang out and mark a day that was special to them when they were alive.

There is no truth to the saying, "Out of sight. Out of mind."  The physical absence of someone doesn't mean  you stop thinking about that person when they die or that your need to feel close to them at particular times of the year also stops when they die.  I know someone who still bakes a cake on her father's birthday even though he died years ago and we still hang my husband's Christmas stocking on the  fireplace right beside the others.

We all have our rituals to ease the pain and they are precious.

Anniversary Rituals?

This month would have marked the 25^th anniversary of our wedding if my husband was still alive.  I wonder if he knows?  If things had turned out differently, I’m sure we would have thrown a big party for our family and friends to help us celebrate 25 years flying by since we first said “I do” to each other.

I looked at the calendar this year and thought about all those other anniversaries.  Of course, I haven’t celebrated a wedding anniversary for the past eight years and, truth be told, some anniversaries were more fun than others.  I think that’s true for every couple because it’s just part of the emotional roller coaster of being married.  But the important thing was we always tried to make time to do something special, remember that eventful day and reminisce about the wedding itself.  We had such a good time at our wedding that after the reception ended we joined a group of our friends who were going to a local bar to continue celebrating.

For our first wedding anniversary, I made the dinner reservation and I put a lot of thought into trying to find a place neither of us had been before.  I wanted to find a restaurant where the food was delicious, the atmosphere was comfortable and romantic but it wasn’t too expensive.  I thought I had done well but instead I had flunked reservation making big time.  We walked into the restaurant and my husband didn’t like it AT ALL.  Since I didn’t really want to go through that again, we agreed that in the future, he could make the anniversary reservations.

Fast forward to the wedding anniversary that arrived just after my husband died, and I was emotionally drained.  I didn’t really feel anything except numb – just as though I was walking through cotton candy.  Life’s daily routines were definitely surreal.

The next year was much harder for me because as silly as it sounds, it took me about a year to really absorb the fact that he was gone.  In that first year, I still was sort of looking for him.  Once, I was driving the car to the grocery store and I saw a man walking on the opposite side of the street with the same physical build as my husband,  dressed in the same uniform my husband wore: khaki pants and a denim shirt.  In that split second I thought it was him.  I remember there being something about the way the man walked that made me do a double take.  I had to pull into a parking lot and collect myself.

25 years. . . how could it be?  We were married for 17 years before he died and we had known each other for three to four years prior to getting married.  He was my best friend.  I recently browsed through the album of wedding pictures and shut it after a few pages.   The flood of emotions was unsettling.  In some ways, it felt as though it happened yesterday but it also it felt like a dream.  Did that really happen to me?  Is that really me in that wedding gown?  My God, we took so much for granted. 

Now the date is a day without rituals but I still have my memories.