Christmas in grief by Danielle R
It's December now, but Christmas has been here for months, lurking on store shelves since late summer. The idea of Christmas is on sale everywhere, and the commercialization is intense. Decorations, songs, gifts, snowmen, and Santas are omnipresent, big. Pushy, even.
When you lose someone, there’s a lot of talk about surviving the first year of special days without them: The first birthday (yours and theirs), the first anniversary, the first Christmas. And so on. This is because holidays, milestones, and other important moments tend to amplify grief. Once brimming with joy and celebration, special times now bring a sense of foreboding. They are another thing to get through, to carry, to survive.
And it’s not just the days themselves; grief transforms important traditions too. Every small and big thing that brought comfort, meaning, and joy—strings of glowing lights, the scent of pine or balsam fir, a row of stockings—these are harbingers, not of cheer, but of sorrow.
It’s hard to describe the experience of Christmas when you’re in the throes of grief, when the assumptions of peace and joy aren’t met. When every bright glass ball is hollow, empty.
In my grief, Christmas is a demand—it wants something from me that I do not have. It seems to say, “Wrap yourself in that cellophane, curl the ribbon, show us the smile. Cover that death. Slap a bow on it. Call it a gift.”
Christmas is a confrontation. I am too surrounded by bustling houses, shining storefronts, and glowing faces. No matter what, I am on the cold side of the glass, face pressed up against a happiness I don’t feel and can’t escape.
Christmas is grief set ablaze. The glee and excitement feels intrusive. It’s all too much—being yanked back and forth by the discordance of the outside world versus what’s inside me. It feels violent—this seesawing between grief and Christmas cheer. The crashing against what should be but isn’t. The full houses and the empty seats. The barely living and the dead.
Christmas with Toby
There is something uniquely terrible about the year of firsts, and yet, nothing magical happens after that point. Grief isn’t suddenly over after a year. I know this from experience. The first round of special days without your person are gruelling, but you’re not passing by checkpoints in a marathon. You’re not going to cross a finish line or slice through a ribbon. No one is going to clap at the end and greet you with a Gatorade and a towel.
You’re not going to be “finished.” Not after a year. Not ever.
Death is forever. And forever lasts long past the year of firsts. There are going to be many big days and important moments without your person, and these won’t all be marked on a calendar. Case in point: Recently, I had a journalist ask if he could interview me for a story about Grief Casseroles (I posted about this under “notes”). It was such a special and exciting moment, and I was also full of sadness knowing I could never share it with Toby. He’ll never know about that interview. He’ll never know that this Substack I started for him was already noticed by another writer.
Whatever else happens to me in my life, whether it’s marked on the calendar or not, Toby will never know about it.
This is my first Christmas without him. I try to avoid stores, but that’s not always possible. When I have to go in somewhere, I usually wear headphones to block out the Christmas music. (Confession: I actually love the Mariah Carey song, but definitely not right now.) I see people sipping holiday lattes, chatting, pushing shopping carts full of gifts. Sometimes, I linger over things Toby would have liked. I touch a sweater, a jigsaw puzzle, a pair of socks. I imagine buying things for him and setting them under the tree. Again and again, I imagine what should be, but isn’t. I feel the weight of what was taken from Toby, from me. And from everyone else who loved and needed him.
So this is Christmas. I hope you have fun. And I do mean that. Truly. Because you never know what can happen. For those of you who are in grief (or if something else is going on in your life), it’s okay if this time of the year is about survival. The internet is full of “survival guides” to help us manage the holiday hazards.
I can assure you that my social media won’t be serving up holiday baking or pretty Christmas trees. I’m not planning how to decorate or whom to entertain. I’m a tactician in a Situation Room, reviewing options, weighing risks, thinking to myself: What am I going to do? How am I going to get through this?
This is shit. I won’t put a bow on it and pretend otherwise.
https://griefcasseroles.substack.com