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Grieve and be Happy

What if I don’t feel like being “Merry”?
December 2, 2017
The First Year of Grieving
January 2, 2018

IF  there is one thing I have learned about the holiday season, it is this simple-truth: There is no perfect holiday! I need to admit that I am not the Christmas freak I used to be. Like you, when I was younger, Christmas possessed a magical quality. But aging is its own impractical joke. Just living can rob us of the energy required to be a kid again. My wife and I have often observed that having fun seems to require a lot more work! During the holidays every mall looks and smells the same and holiday traffic resembles a third world country! And while I’m on a roll, how many people do you know will give their spouse a Lexus or Mercedes as a Christmas gift the way the holiday car commercials suggest? And…Am I the only one cringing when I hear the song, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”?

Please understand that I am still drawn to those great Christmas movies like, “A Christmas Carol”, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “White Christmas”, “Miracle on 34th Street”, “A Christmas Story”, “Christmas Vacation”, “Home Alone” (1&2 only) and “Elf”. Now, I realize that there is a very broad generational span between Jimmy Stewart and Will Farrell, but each movie represents a different season of my life. Those films take us to a better place and allow us to escape reality just long enough to laugh, cry or just fall asleep with something good on our brains.

The challenge that we face during the holidays is our unrealistic expectation. Every year I yearn to recapture the sentiment and fervency of the Christmas season only to realize that I have, in the words of the Righteous Brothers, “Lost that lovin’ feelin’.” And I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever get it back.

That’s what grief does. It dulls the edge, creates shadows and dims the light. To those on the outside, grief is an irrational downer. Grief is real and normal, but is so misunderstood by so many.

   You might cringe at the sentimentalism of, “Oh, There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays…” because, at this moment, your home ino place for the holidays!  

If you have experienced the loss of someone to death, loss of a relationship, loss of a or a job, or even the loss of your health in this last year you may be grieving because the issue is the same for everyone…loss. And while others are wrapping gifts, shopping on line, heading to the mall or letting the velvet tones of holiday crooners like Bing Crosby to Michael Buble’ wash over them, you might cringe at the sentimentalism of “There’s No Place Like Home for The Holidays…” And, you change the radio station, because, at this Christmas … your home is no place for the holidays!

Want to know a second simple-truth? That’s O.K.

I once heard a great quote in one of my favorite (non-holiday) movies, “Rudy”. Young Rudy Ruettiger asks Father Cavanaugh if he has prayed enough to achieve his goal of being accepted at Notre Dame.

The wise priest replies, “We pray in our time, God answers in his time.” The reason why I find this quote so appropriate is because that’s how grief works. We want to end grief on our time when grief ends on its own time.

I encourage you to allow yourself to grieve. Don’t compare your grief with some else’s grief. And don’t be surprised when someone doesn’t understand why you should just “cheer up”, or that you “should be over it by now”. Your loss, your pain, your heart…doesn’t answer to them.

But, I have come to believe that the most effective way to be able to arrive on the other side of grief is to be free to grieve. Grieving is the mind’s way of coming to terms with our heart. It’s working out the pain of the loss of something irreplaceable to us, and because of that void, we find that we are vulnerable. When someone we love dies, grieving is our way of insuring that the one for whom we grieve will remain forever embedded in our hearts; that no one will ever be able to take that away from us. But I must share one last simple-truth:                                                                                                      It’s O.K. to be Happy!

I’ll say it again…It’s O.K. to experience happiness! No one will judge you for laughing. No one will criticize you for being with other people or holiday shopping. The one who has died will not feel you have betrayed them by allowing yourself to give and receive happiness. Your happiness doesn’t cheapen your grief, and it doesn’t dilute your love for the one you miss so much.

 So, grieve as you should…But don’t feel guilty for feeling joy this holiday season.

 

Greg

Greg Webber, Director
MFCS Community Care/Aftercare
Certified Celebrant

 

Morrissett Funeral and Cremation Service
6500 Iron Bridge Rd.
N. Chesterfield, VA 23234
Serving the Richmond area since 1870

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