Holidays After Losing Someone

As the holidays fast approach, many people are looking forward to some respite from the chaos that has been 2020.

Christmas decorations started going up in my neighborhood right after Halloween. Stores had Christmas displays in September. Satellite radio Holiday stations went active earlier than usual.

It seems there is a collective voice saying “Yes, we need a little Christmas right this very minute!”

But, the holidays can be a huge, jumbled up, mixed bag of emotions for so many people too.

I’m particularly thinking of a friend who recently lost someone. The next couple of months are likely to be full of a myriad of conflicting emotions for her.

It’s going to suck.

There’s just no way around it.

The “first”…everything after losing someone is hard. First holidays, birthdays, anniversaries…it’s all going to be an emotional train wreck.

This can be especially confusing when it seems the whole world around you is celebrating joy, love, and peace.

Holiday cheer just can’t fill the emptiness you feel with the loss of that loved one.

I speak from personal experience.

For a long time, the holidays have been a confusing mess of emotions for me. The brilliant magic of the season with an underlying sense of despair and loss.

Three weeks after I got married (the first time) my Mom died.

No warning.

She was here, then she wasn’t.

That was just over a week before Christmas.

A year later, in January, on my Mom’s birthday, my Grandma (Mom’s mom) crossed over to be with her daughter.

December of that year, I had an emergency surgery (on the anniversary of Mom’s internment) that I was not expected to survive (I’m feeling much better now, thanks!).

Two years after that, a week before Mom’s birthday, Dad crossed.

So when people have a seemingly confusing mix of emotions around this time of year, I get it.

I have been living with this strange emotional hodgepodge for over two decades and for me there seems to be no rhyme nor reason as to how the holidays will affect my emotions.

Some years I have a fond remembrance of the good times with my lost loved ones and sometimes I sit for hours listening to that line from Dream Child by Trans Siberian Orchestra, “And all that night the snow came down, to heal the scars, our lives had found, and the years that lay broken…” and cry and cry.

I say all of this, because no matter how much we may need a little Christmas (or Thanksgiving, or New Year’s Eve) right this very minute, it can be complicated for people.

I invite you to hold compassion in your heart for yourself, and others (good advice no matter what time of year).

If you know someone dealing with a lost loved one, maybe lost during the holidays, or they are still adjusting to holidays without a loved one, offer them some love and support.

Sometimes, the simple act of saying, “The holidays can be hard, I understand” can make all the difference in the world.

The Road Will Teach You How To Love and Let Go

I've seen stories from music therapists recently about losing people they have worked with, for many years in some cases.

For those music therapists among you who have never lost a client/ patient, it will happen. It happens to all of us...and there is absolutely nothing that can fully prepare you for when it happens to you.

Yes, you can gain intellectual knowledge about the grieving process and loss...you may have helped countless people work through their own grieving process.

It's different when it happens to you.

I was explaining to a patient recently what it's like from a provider standpoint. He was wondering, since he's had several inpatient stays for addiction, if people dread the sight of him being admitted for treatment again. 

I told him for some of us, we do hate to see people that we know are struggling, have such a hard time. Sometimes the path of addiction ends in an early grave, and that hurts, as a provider, because we want the best for our clients/ patients. Otherwise, we would be doing something else.

What I didn't share with him, was a bit of solace I found in the lyrics for "Wash it Away" by Nahko and Medicine for the People:

The road will teach you how to love and let go, it can be lonely, but it's the only thing that we've ever known.

All providers, especially music therapists must find the wisdom in these words. We do what we do because we care. Yes, we have to maintain professional boundaries, but music itself fosters intimacy with those we serve. It's an art for expressing emotions...we get attached to our clients/ patients.

Our professional and our life journey, the road, will teach us how to be invested in the highest good for our clients/ patients, and when our paths part ways due to death, we experience our grief process, and gently, with love and light, we let them go.

We let them go and we move on to the next client/ patient who also needs our unique skills to help them along the road of their life.

When a client/ patient leaves you in this manner, draw from your support community and from the experience of others who've walked the path before.

This is how the road teaches us to love and let go.