Black Fridays: black holidays.

I did not go shopping on Black Friday.  I stayed home except for driving to school to retrieve a few things I need for an upcoming trip.  As I drove to school, I noticed a full parking lot at the nearby funeral home.  My heart was saddened for the people inside.  When a loved one dies, it is hard on those of us left behind.  It is even harder around the holiday season.  I know this because nine years ago my sister died.  She had a car wreck right before Thanksgiving, and she never recovered. 

When someone dies during the holidays, your holiday memories forever include that loss. You see, during the holidays, you are supposed to be cheerful, jolly even.  That is hard to do when someone you love has died.  William Carlos Williams has an excellent poem, “Tract,” that prescribes how people should act when they experience loss. 

In the poem, Williams laments the fact that funerals have become a show.  Indeed, some of the ritual of funerals and wakes and memorials and visitations are a show – a show designed to allow the grief-stricken time to gather and comfort each other.  A time to remember.  A time to mourn.  These are important aspects of the grieving process according to psychologists.  Having a funeral and its associated events are especially difficult during the holidays because people want to be merry during this time.  Being surrounded by societal merry-making while dealing with the sadness of loss is one of the worst sorts of conundrums.  You want to celebrate, but you also want and need to mourn.  It is a difficult place to be. Furthermore, the days are shorter and despite the lights twinkling along the roads, your heart does not light up easily. 

It can be hard to support friends who lose family members during the holidays, as well.  A few years ago an acquaintance of mine died.  I remember overhearing a conversation in which one person complained of having to go to the visitation before his office Christmas party.  Huh?  Is this a valid complaint?  His heart might just be a few sizes too small.  Death is never convenient, and sometimes those of us left living must attend to its details while buying Christmas presents or making latkes.  It’s not easy, but it has to be done.  One of the best things any human being can do for another is to sit, hold hands, and fetch tea for the mourning.  As my mom might say, you get extra stars in your crown if you do this when holiday details are tugging at your coat sleeves.

My sincerest wish for all of you reading is that you do not experience the death of a loved one during the holiday season, but some of you will.  Others of you will be called upon to support friends who lose family members during this most wonderful time of the year.  Still others of you will not experience the heartbreak of holiday time death

Williams writes in his second to last stanza:

“Go with some show

of inconvenience; sit openly—

to the weather as to grief.

Or do you think you can shut grief in?

What--from us? We who have perhaps

nothing to lose? Share with us

share with us--it will be money

in your pockets”

If your holiday is halted (heaven forbid) by a death in your family or if your festivities are slowed down so that you can support a friend who has lost a loved one – go and grieve openly with no shame.  Be sad.  Make tea.  Hold your friend’s hand.  Make a casserole.  Grieve.  The holiday will still be there when you are ready to join it – this year or next or the next.  If your car is one of those in the parking lot of a funeral home this season or if you revisit a loss each season, please know that my heart is with you.