I didn’t know it was possible to dread the holiday season like this, heading into my family’s first Thanksgiving and Christmas without my dad.
Grief can be an accurate prognosticator in that it can predict which days are going to be nearly impossible to get through. Birthdays and holidays, I know, are going to be especially sad and terrible. Grief is almost nice in that way. I know that I’m going to be miserable, so I can set my expectations accordingly.
But being miserable is exhausting. So I can’t bring myself to be grateful for the emotional forecast grief offers. I can really only push through for another month until the holidays are over and this terrible year comes to an end.
I am not, however, wholly without gratitude during this season of Thanksgiving. As much as I dread going through the motions of holiday celebrations without my dad at the Thanksgiving table, I am eager, maybe desperate, to reflect on the positive experiences of the year, perhaps as a reprieve from the exhaustion.
The positives are, without a doubt, the love and kindness of others.
A week ago, a group of friends showed up at my door. They were there to present me with a painting they had commissioned of me and my dad dancing at my wedding.
The art took my breath away. Not just because of its immense beauty, but because of the overwhelming love I felt from the gesture. My friends understood what I had only subconsciously felt — that the loss of my dad had created a love deficit. And their gift demonstrated that they were willing to help reduce that negative balance.
When my dad died, I lost one of the most consistent sources of love in my life. As did everyone who was lucky enough to have him as part of their circle. That loss of love felt, still feels and will probably always feel impossible to replace. But I’m so thankful for everyone who has tried to help fill the well of emptiness.
Until his death, I had never given much thought to why we surround people who have lost a loved one. I knew it was customary to send food or flowers, but I had not examined why. I had not pondered how the hugs, declarations of sympathy and time spent crying with the bereaved helped alleviate some of their hurt.
But now, after months of being forced to consider the impact these efforts have on the grieving, I realize that it’s all to reassure those who have lost someone that not all the love in their life is gone. That the world is not wholly devoid of people willing to be there for you, even if the person who was always there for you no longer can be.
It has been the love and kindness of others that has made the last three months bearable, and people have shown up for me in ways I never thought possible. Not just in the immediate aftermath, but with ongoing outreach and support.
I am so grateful for the friends who have experienced a similar loss and have known exactly what to say and when. I am grateful for the friends who have not experienced a similar loss but have shown up for me despite the awkwardness and discomfort of not knowing exactly what to say and when. I am grateful for neighbors who have left food on the porch and family members who have texted “Please tell me how to help,” and meant it. I am grateful for colleagues who have cried with me and congregation members who hug me in the church hallways. I am grateful for readers who have emailed their heartfelt condolences. I am grateful for those who have sat with me in my pain.
People have been so generous, loving and kind that it’s made me regret not doing more for others who have faced grief in the past, and I have resolved to do more for those who will face grief in the future. I can only hope to be even a portion as good to others as people have been to me.
I am in no way grateful for the past few months. If I could, I would give anything to not have lived through them. But as it is, I’m learning a lot of lessons in grief, entirely against my will. And the most important and obvious of those lessons is that people are, overwhelmingly, good.
That’s something that my dad knew and taught by the way he lived and the way he treated others. He had a way of showing that even people with whom he had little in common, or with whom he disagreed, were, for the most part, overwhelmingly good. He also had a way of helping those people find the goodness in themselves.
When he left this world so unexpectedly, I wondered if I’d ever be able to recognize that goodness again. But I’ve been so immediately and consistently surrounded with love that the goodness is now undeniable. In his absence, others have responded to my family’s loss exactly how he would have. And it’s made the love deficit feel a little less severe.