Bargaining that maybe I am thankful on the 4th Thursday of November (Or the 2nd Monday in October).

                I had one of the most interesting conversations in church that had me thinking now that the holidays are coming around again.  We talked about trying to be thankful when you have just not been feeling the holiday due to grief and loss.  

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a holiday where people (primarily families) join together for a meal.  Maybe there is a thankful prayer said or maybe there is not (based on the degree of secularism practiced).  Maybe there is a time where people act as family and relax together and be themselves as blood-relatives.   Or course there could be the noisy rehashing of the unresolved family drama that has gone on for decades.  Maybe you are reminded why you only see your family the few times a year that you do.  Regardless of the joy or dysfunction, it is a holiday that has some kind of tradition . . . some of them are just more enjoyable or miserable than others.

         Based on this blog, it is no mystery that the holidays are jaded by Grief and Loss.  Death, divorce and estrangement transform the meaning and fulfillment of traditions into a trauma memory.  What was once gratifying and warm has become negative and cold.   

            But the holiday does come around again whether it is the second Monday in October in Canada or the fourth Thursday in the United States to remind us that it is a day to be thankful.  The calendar reminds us that the world still turns regardless of the enduring grief that has colored the holidays into bad times.

            Bargaining is typically the third stage in Kubler-Ross’s five-stage model of grief. It is a period where people try to regain control of the situation after a loss.  Maybe there is a chance to reclaim what was lost.  Maybe the relationship can be restored and maybe the dead could be brought back to life because there is some delusional hope that you are just stuck in a long, bad dream.  However, in Kubler-Ross’s framework people usually enter the depression stage when they realize there is no more bargaining and the loss is real and irrevocable.  However, maybe it seems is possible to bargain that there is some reason to move on and find meaning and purpose in a holiday even if the old meaning is gone.

             Part of the bargaining is accepting that the feeling doesn’t have to be spectacular or awe-inspiring.  Thankfulness seems to recognize that there is something that is somehow and in some way good.  

            A stretch of a metaphor or a pun that may be applicable in the case of thanksgiving, is the highly anxious person trying to take a deep breath.   Anxiety and stress makes muscles tense and the first deep breath hurts because the muscles in the torso are often tight to the point of being sore or pulled.  Doing more deep breathing will eventually loosen the muscles and the pain along the sides will go away.   However, to get the process started usually takes the encouragement of a therapist or counselor because an anxious person is of a fixed mindset.

            Consider this your encouragement as negativity is like the aforementioned anxiety and the occupied mind with the negativity of grief and loss seems to have no room for being thankful or joyful.   It takes a bit of bargaining to start practicing thankful thoughts.   Maybe with a little practice, it can become a renewed habit that leads to discovery of new meaning and new fulfillment that makes the fourth Thursday in November or the second Monday in October more pleasant.

           I hope that these thoughts helped you.  Feel free to go through the blog and look at all of the previous posts if you are searching for thoughts on a certain topic or situation. 

Chronic Sorrow versus Grief

Sometimes the bad feeling at Christmas is not grief but chronic sorrow.   Chronic sorrow is essentially pain that returns again and again due to various triggers. Many people have it because the holidays always stink. 

I was introduced to this idea of Chronic Sorrow by Simon Olshansky (1895-1975) this year through some professional education.   Olshansky was a researcher in the rehabilitation field who was actually focused on families with children who have an intellectual/developmental disability.  He defined chronic sorrow as a permanent, ongoing living loss that is progressive, recurring and cyclical.   For Olshansky it is natural for parents of such special needs to have recurring grief when recognizing that a normal child is meeting developmental milestones when their child is not.

     Olshansky’s theory is applicable to many people with recurring holiday grief.  If your family is detached or estranged, there is the likelihood that the feelings of sorrow recur

·         When you hear other people talk about getting together with their families for the holidays

·         When you hear Perry Como sing “There’s no place like home for the holidays.”

·         When you see commercials on TV depicting happy Christmas morning gift exchanges

·         When you go through stores and see things that remind you of the holiday traumas or defunct traditions.

There is a fine line here about being stuck in grief and having chronic sorrow.  Being stuck in grief typically refers to one loss where you continue to put your life on hold around one issue or loss. Yes, it does no good to dwell on the past, but on the other, since we are inundated . . . no make that smothered with the intensity of holiday triggers through messages, sounds, and images, many of us (with otherwise sound coping skills) will feel the emotions of grief whether it is anger or depression.

 The resulting holiday depression can be like the “frog in the kettle” effect where we can get boiled by the water that gradually was raised in temperature.  We realize that it happened after it has happened and not while it is happening.   Before you know it we are pretty emotional or deep in the doldrums.

Well, the question becomes: what do you or I supposed to do about it?    That is purely an existential question, because I cannot tell you what to do about it.   While I can offer you ideas for choices that you can make, I can only make my own choices.

I accept that :

1. There are some who would rather just sit home and be miserable.  They would rather be home either avoiding others or playing a victim role and not really wanting rescue.  
2. There are some who are going to take hold of the day and find meaning and purpose and connection with whomever they can connect.  That is better.
3. There are going to be some who are just going to tolerate the holiday and look forward to January 2 when the holiday season is over for another 10 months until retailers start putting out the Christmas stuff again.

Option #2 is the therapist answer, but the longer I work as a clinical social worker the more I find myself being non-judgmental and accepting of the people who choose option #1 as life is just not that simple.   I affirm that they are making a choice within their own power and self-determination—something most of us want to do.

I have decided at the end of this rumination that mindfulness is probably the best strategy possible in dealing with sorrow.  We often have to recognize our feeling and where it probably comes from and what we can do about it. 

If the sorrow thing fits you in that memories about holiday tragedies and family dysfunctions continue to come up with the different triggers, it is your responsibility as to how you choose to react and how you will choose to spend your time.  

I hope that this helps.  Feel free to look back at the other blog entries to see if there is something you are interested in reading.  If you would like for me to write on a related topic, please make a comment below. 

The Pain is Real, so Hopefully also the Hope: Remembering Doug

I am still thinking about hope.  I am also thinking about my classmate from high school who died last week.   Death happens any day and any time.   As we get older we tend to know more and more people who die.  Depending on your view of Eschatology we are all going to die unless raptured directly by God (we may get to that).

Nevertheless, I had not seen Doug since 1984. We had our conversation in the middle of a country road.  I was running on a hot summer day and he was driving by.  He stopped and backed up in his Chevrolet Chevette, and we briefly talked about what we were doing and where we were going in life.

From what I remember of Doug as a high school student I was pleasantly and thankfully surprised learn from the Facebook posts about him contained information that he was a man of faith before he had died.  When he thanked all of us for our birthday wishes a few weeks back on Facebook he also had thanked God. 

Despite my poor witness as an adolescent, God can still work.

While I had not seen Doug since 1984 and had never met any of his kids, I can only imagine the pain and numbness they might be feeling this week.   Their father is gone.    I can only imagine the intensity of nothingness or numbness that the shock of a loved one’s sudden death brings.  It is very real but also very unreal.  Hope is typically the last thought on the mind.

When it comes to grief and loss I think that we do not think about hope until after some of the shock has gone and we are feeling the anger and depression.  For the people in these stages of grief, hope in Christmas can be a spiritual under-current that flows against the empty bright lights and the trite and platitudinous Christmas music playing in the background.  The hope we find in Advent and Christmas allows us to cry and express our feelings.  It hopefully allows us to reach out to God despite our lack of understanding of why things happened, and that we will move on and we will see less painful days. 

Christmas can be a very spiritual, heady time for the thoughtful one.  Underneath the Christmas tree and Santa Claus façade is the message of what the babe in the manger came to bring—hope in that there is the forgiveness of our sins and the hope of life of life after death. 

Christmas points to the biggest miracle ever accomplished and our need for hope and faith.  The baby whose birth we celebrate only lived 33 years.   He did not perpetually stay in that manger.   He died and rose again and according to the Bible sits at the right hand of God the Father. 

People doubted it then and they doubt it now, but Christmas also asks the rhetorical question that St. Paul/The Apostle Paul asked King Agrippa in Acts 26: 8 Why does it seem incredible to you that God should raise the dead?  (New Jerusalem Bible).

When we talk about God and death and hope, it does not sit well with many people who are empiricists or skeptics.  There is a cliff where factual analysis takes us.  At the end of the cliff there is the emotional and spiritual void that no rationalization is going to fill.   We cannot know it all and we cannot figure it all out and so we have to have some kind of non-empirical answer for what is happening.   We are in an emotional wilderness without direction or bearing and where we are just surviving and that is where hope and faith comes in even in the midst of tough emotions.   

No easy way to conclude this, but even with my intellectual discussion, I recognize that from the physician to the scholar to the factory worker we are all simple people.  Real pain does not exactly let you do fancy things. We all must do simple things to get through the pain.   We have to admit our humanity.  We pray and we cry.  If we do the best we can and make it through then we did okay. 

Wants

The engine of the holiday season as we know it is  . . . “wants.”   A common question in our conversations is: what do you want for Christmas?  Retailers hope that you want to part with your currency or incur debt to get what you and others want for Christmas.

We human beings have wants.   The wants may be expectations, desires, longings, cravings, obsessions or just plain wants.   The intensity of the want corresponds with the intensity of our emotions.   Some of our unfulfilled wants can cause must pain and distraction to the rest of the business of life.

As children we wanted the coolest toys but would often settle for something that we could at least enjoy.    As adults, what we want varies.    Maybe we want things.  Maybe we want our families to behave in the same room together and be happy.  Maybe we want to get everyone just the perfect gift.  Maybe we want the deceased loved one to come back into the room and make the holiday good again.

Some of our wants are realistic and some are just fantasies that will never happen.  We sometimes cannot tell the difference based on how much emotionally close we are to the situation.  Emotional closeness to matters takes away the objectivity and judgment and so there is a blur in whether a want is realistic or fantasy.  

Sometimes we do not learn what our wants are until we have the negative feelings.  We may not have realized how strong the want was until we have gotten distracted with the thoughts.  Detangling this emotional web is difficult because emotional thinking is not always clear thinking.

Wants in terms of Grief

Grief has my thoughts when it comes to wants.  Grief and wants come together in the forms of regrets and the act of holding on.

When we think of our regrets, we think about what we would have wanted of ourselves in a previous situation.   When people grieve or are stuck in grief, they are usually regretting not having done something.   They are expressing anger towards themselves.

In my profession I have seen people get creative with the regret.    People who take things personally let their imaginations get creative with everything they could have and would have done . . . but did not do.   (Hindsight is viciously 20-20)

Another kind of want I have seen lately is the want of hanging on.  Many people have pictures plastered of the gone loved one all over their residences. Husbands or wives keep closets and garages and attics of their deceased spouse’s possessions untouched.  Some people keep their loved ones’ ashes on mantles and shelves in plain sight.  People keep tons of books from degrees that they have achieved but no longer use.  They do not want to let go.   

At the holidays many of us we feel pain because of the unresolved grief and loss.  We reflect on why we feel terrible.  We want to feel better.   The question is what do we do to feel better?  

The matter of what we want does not necessarily have an easy solution due to the matter of emotions.  We are often greatly invested in the want.  There is nothing particularly rational about the want—it is a piece of us—and we do not want to lose that.  

The solution to the want is not necessarily a quick one.  Sometimes the solution is surrendering what we want, because continuing to hold onto it causes more pain than letting go.  Sometimes holding onto a want holds us back in our lives as to what we can be and what we can do.  It is often a matter of choosing what kind of pain we will feel.

I hopefully do not leave you with a glib answer as to what to do.  I am assuming that you are reading this because you wanted something in the form of coping or relief. 

Maybe you need permission to want to feel terrible.  You have my permission if it matters to you, because we as humans feel terrible at times . . . even at holidays. We all have terrible circumstances at times.  Just be warned . . . continuing to feel terrible often turns out to be a choice (whether you intended it or not).     You maybe needing to make another choice.

Needs

 

Beginning note: Today is the beginning of another Advent season.  I was wavering about whether or not to write another year.  I was inspired to write after seeing that 80 people alone looked at this blog the previous month (November 2013).   Within that in mind, I hope that there is something for you to think about . . . benefit from . . . find comfort in . . . and help you live your life.
 

Anyway, the holiday season has effectively been going on for more than one month where I live in Louisville Kentucky USA.  Stores have had Christmas displays set up before Halloween (October 31).  Three radio stations have been playing Christmas music with Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah song thrown in for good measure since November 1.  Christmas-themed commercials have been playing for a little bit longer.      I have not exactly found myself too stressed because I have been too busy.

However as Thanksgiving has just passed, Christmas is getting closer.   The intensity has increased with more commercials, more music and more conversations that include discussions about Christmas.  It is inescapable.

The holiday season tends to bring to mind to many of us that we feel empty.  We feel terrible. 

Emptiness—a signal that there is a need

I have been mindful in the past year of the concept of feeling empty.  When we feel empty we feel sad and lost.

Emptiness is not exactly a feeling in itself.  I would say that it is a form of sadness or depression.  It tells us that something is missing.  It tells us that we have a need. 

Maslow tells us that we have several kinds of needs in his “hierarchy.”  We have a need for food and water.  We need security and shelter.  We have a need for belonging.  We have a need for self-esteem.    In his hierarchy, Maslow notes that self-esteem does not matter unless we have food, safety and belonging.   

Depending on the logic you use, Maslow’s theory could be applied to just about any situation.  However, I would add that we have spiritual needs and that our needs change over time.  Furthermore, what meets those needs also changes over time.

Needs change

Through my career as a social worker, I have learned that needs change in our lives as we age, and as our situation changes.   When I was working with geriatric patients, I saw the need for feeling safe and not falling down as one heads to the toilet.  As I currently work with adolescents, I see the primary need to belong and fit in.  

I have seen that my needs have changed throughout my life.  I had certain needs as an adolescent that I do not have in my 40’s.  I have current needs that were not present in my teen years.  It could be good or it could be bad . . . but it is definitely different.

Grief and loss cause a lot of change in terms of “needs”

I have also learned that when someone has a death of a loved one or some other significant loss, they suddenly have unmet needs that they have to identify and figure out how to meet again. 

We live our lives assuming that things will never change.  That is okay because we cannot be distracted from the business that is in front of us. 

However, when the loss happens, we realize a reality that can only come through loss . . . we were getting our needs met in a certain way that cannot continue.  We usually are lost in the shock and later during the anger, bargaining, and depression stages of grief we realize the unmet need.   

Part of the grief recovery in the stage of acceptance, we figure out how to meet the unmet needs again.   Hopefully, when we meet our unmet needs, we move on and our lives are more happy than sad.

Needs are not always needs . . . but are wants in disguise

The reality of life is that not everything we think is a need is a need—this is true in the areas of self-esteem and belonging.   The child wants a new toy that everyone else allegedly has.  The adolescent wants to look like every one of their peers.  Adults have similar needs to adolescents in terms of belonging.

As I have gone on in my life, I have had to admit that what I thought was a need, was really not a need.  I think that the struggle for many people my age (late 40’s) we have beliefs as to what should give us the self-esteem.   We find ways to cope with not having what we feel we should have.  Hopefully, the coping methods and skills are not destructive.  

Coping hopefully allows us to distract our mind from the negative and focus on the positive.  Hopefully, we feel there is something for which to be thankful. 

We often have to reflect on our unmet needs.  We have to evaluate them with the question: Will I die if I do not have this?     I admit that I have had to answer “no” to this question many times.

However, this concept gets tricky when we think to the need for a family.  We do need to have belonging, and Christmas commercials showing family members having a good time remind many of us that we do not have family . . . or are estranged from family.  The catch here is that even if we were with those estranged family members, there would be more pain than benefit.  Sometimes we have to create family to meet the need of belonging.

Fulfillment and contentment—the opposite of emptiness

When we feel contentment and fulfillment, we do not have the feeling of emptiness.  As we have different kinds of needs, we get our sense of contentment and fulfillment from all kinds of sources. 

However, we feel emptiness at different times for different reasons even in a split second.  When we become mindful of a disappointment or a loss our mind can forget the contentment and fulfillment that existed the previous minute.   

All of us have the potential challenge today and this holiday season of quelling the feelings of emptiness.  Maybe we will have to do something to find fulfillment, and maybe we will have to cope with the feeling of emptiness until we find what it is we need and then meet it.

Maybe you can find something to find fulfillment today.  If you are reading this blog for the first time, you are welcome to go back to the previous entries and find things you can use to help you cope today.

May your needs get met today.   

Holiday Grief Re-examined: The Reasons

I have decided to think about grief over the next few posts.  Grief is the number one detractor of the holiday season. 

There are many reasons why people grieve. This post cannot cover every reason, but it will try to cover the different categories.

To me the best definition of grief is: The natural emotional response to the loss of a cherished person, thing, or idea.

If something or someone is not cherished then we do not grieve it or the person.  For example, when I dropped the french fry on the floor of my car Wednesday night going to my brother's house for Thanksgiving, I simply threw it out and did not give it a second thought.   A second example is actor Larry Hagman's death.  Most of my Friday nights in high school in the 1980's were complete with Dallas coming on at 9pm, but when Larry Hagman died over the weekend,  I did not feel much at all because I did not personally know him.     These are non-examples of grief.

(Mind you I suspect that other people who were die-hard fans of Larry Hagman took it harder. That is their right.)

The cherished people

When it comes to grief, thoughts usually first come to the cherished people in our lives.  Loss of people means people dying, people leaving, relationships ending, friends moving, and even more so now, loved ones developing dementia and slowing becoming zombies.  

For me, my grandmother died back in May.  I would say that she is a cherished member of my family.  Now that she is gone, I still find myself having a little bit of grief, but I have prepared myself for a number of years as she had been headed towards the century mark, and she had not been a central figure in making Christmas for the better part of 16 years.  

However, it is rough for most people who have lost a family member or loved one. The holiday just is not the same without the cherished person.

The more central the cherished person was in the holiday, the harder it is.  The loved one who had "made" Christmas and who had all the family over is irreplaceable and the family is almost lost without him or her at Christmas. 

Pets are people too.

A pet is an emotional presence in a person's life.  A pet accepts you without judgment.  A pet usually greets you and seems happy to see you.  A pet lives with its master for up to decades.  People do grow emotionally close to pets.  I have seen people cry when talking about a deceased pet.   I think that it is perfectly appropriate or healthy to grieve your pet . . . it is not stupid.

The Things or Stuff

Regardless of priorities, I do believe that people will cry over losing cherished things.  Cherished things hold value and meaning.  Things cost money and if something is lost, the effort and time is lost. Cherished things hold memories and symbols of experiences and the love of people. 

Even though it is just stuff, and it seems cheesy, I think that people do grieve the loss.

Ideas  

People chase dreams.   Often the chase is a dead-end.

Typically when people chase dreams we think of the person packing up and go to Hollywood, Nashville, Broadway or some other entertainment "Mecca" to go for it.  Many people enter degree programs to go after a desired profession.  Many people take risks to open their own businesses.    People give up their dreams because they are flat out told they have no chance, or they have to give it up for other reasons.

Some people have simpler dreams of finding that soul mate or having that family.  Mr or Ms. Right does not appear or leaves.  The news of infertility ends hope of having a biological child.  Depending on the intensity of the pursuit, and how much blood, sweat and tears are put in, the resulting pain is equally intense.

It is up to you to decide if it is grief

Grief can be as individual as the person. People miss different things in different intensity levels. Some family members miss a deceased loved more than others.  Things and ideas are of different value to different people. 

If you are having emotion about something, then it could be grief.  You are the decider. 

Why does this matter?

While grief is a natural response to loss, if it is allowed to go on too long, grief gets in the way of other things, events, and relationships that matter.  Some people shut themselves off from priorities and relationships in the here and now that should get the energy spent on grief.  They lose more than just the object being grieved.

I do not leave you with easy answers as to how you should proceed, but I have some general guidelines.  If you are continuing to grieve the loss of a person, place or thing that happened within the last 12 months, then grief is considered to be normal, and this holiday is going to be a time that is a little bit (or more) difficult and you will feel like you are surviving   However, if you are continuing to grieve a person, thing, or idea that was lost more than two years ago, then seeing a counselor/therapist or going to a support group could be of benefit to help restore the holidays to more of a time of joy.

In the next several posts, I will be looking at the different stages of grief and how they show up in the holidays.
 

Numbness and Shock at Christmas--when loss happens.

Tonight I got paged at a neighborhood association meeting by my wife.  She rarely has paged me at these things.  I called immediately not truly thinking about what it could be about?

She lost the diamond out of her engagement ring. My first response was that I could buy her another diamond.  She said that she knew but that it very much bothered her because it was a precious item. She had been looking and she had made a Facebook post about it.

I left my meeting after enough of the business had been accomplished. I went home and started to help look for the diamond.  I looked with the flashlight at anything that even gleamed in the beam of the light.

For nearly 18 and a half years, the diamond had stayed in its mount, as I looked at the ring when I noticed one of the claws of the setting had been stretched or snagged indicating that it lost its hold on the diamond. Eighteen years later, in a shock, the diamond was probably gone.

I had some hope.  Maybe it was still in the house. Maybe it on the floor of one of the places my wife went to today on perhaps one of her holiday errands.

Even though it had been more than 18 years I remembered the details as I was looking in the matted down carpet . . . I had bought the diamond at a pawn shop.  The feelings were beginning to come with the memories.

I was fighting the survivor behaviors and had told my mother to shut up five months earlier when she kept trying to voice warnings about being careful about dating the woman I was about to ask to be my wife.   Couldn't mom just shut up and say, "whatever you decide I will support."  No--mom's anxiety just wouldn't let her. My survivor behaviors were walls that I had began to beat down about two years earlier when I asked myself what was really going to matter in my life?

It was a 0.42 carat or half carat.  I was nervous as I looked for the diamond.  I was going against all the survivor messages still going on in my brain.  I was a graduate student about to make an extravagant expenditure.  I had looked at jewelry stores that had a similar diamond for a lot more. 

They told me the price--it was a lot of money but a lot less.  I practically said that I would take the diamond in an impulsive manner.  I remembered in my numbness at the time the pawn broker telling me the name and address of a good jeweler who would mount it in a new setting for a good price.   Those were some days of fear and those were days of courage.

After looking for the better part of an hour, I had to stop.  I looked everywhere possible in my not-so-large house.

The Loss that lead to grief.

I would say existentially that I am feeling numb right now.  Even though I am a mental health professional, the real me is feeling numb.  My wife and I have had a loss.  It is not as significant as the other losses that we have experienced such as the miscarriage of two little boys, it is still a loss. 

We did not expect this loss.  In fact, we assumed that the diamond was going to stay mounted in its setting for life.  A valuable symbol was gone.

We all tend to live with the assumption that life is going to continue to go on and on.  While it sounds foolish, it is actually more wise living under this assumption because we just cannot let our imaginations take our energy that we need for living.  If we do not assume that life is going to go on as normal, we would likely be unable to focus on getting things done and worry about everything and anything and all get anxiety-related physical illnesses.

The effect of loss on a person varies according to the significance of the loss.  If a person loses a pen or pencil, it is usually a cheap item that has little to no value and the person is unaffected.  If a person loses a close and cherished loved one suddenly to death, the shock is paralyzing and the person will stop everything. 

Right now, the diamond is somewhere in the middle.  It is more valuable than a stick ball point pen, but far less important than a family member dying.  Our lives will not end.  We will likely feel a little better tomorrow.

Some people are going through shock and denial right now. 

I cannot begin to imagine what kind of numbness and shock people are going through right now.  Love ones are killed in car accidents.  Loved ones are killed in senseless violent crimes.  Some loved ones might have been killed in war.  Some loved ones died suddenly of natural causes such as a heart attack or aneurysm. 

Sudden loss is the game changer in life.  Everything gets put on hold.  Everything changes.  

The world of the person in shock is surreal.  Christmas music and celebrations do not matter.  Food does not taste good.  Forget about decking the halls and hanging out the holly.  

Thinking is Difficult When You are in Shock.

A person in shock feels tense.  A person in shock is preoccupied and yet at the same time cannot keep thoughts straight.   They may factually know that the loss has happened, but they just cannot believe it at the same time--that is why the first stage of grief is called denial.

A person in shock is likely capable of thinking simple things and not about big decisions.  A person in shock is likely to barely be praying--although many people can because they have practiced prayer.  Overall, it is usually enough that they are moving their feet and taking care of the basics in life. 

Don't give advice when someone is in shock--it is the wrong time.

Too many caretaker types stick their royal feet in their mouths in giving advice. 

Yeah--you are just trying to be helpful . . . but

trying too much to help is actually going to be antagonizing and counter-productive.  
Helping someone in shock requires patience on your part.

Is your attempt to help about meeting their need . . . or is it about your trying to settle your own anxiety?   Too much bad advice has come across as criticism because people just had to open their mouths and say something.

You are better off to check on the person who in shock after a big loss and ask them what they need. Maybe they can tell you and maybe they cannot.

If the person in shock cannot tell you what they need.  You can always come back later and ask again.  You can offer something that you can deliver on, and maybe they will take you up on it.  Just don't offer what you cannot deliver. 

Closing comments

The truth is that loss knows no holiday.  While the holidays are to have peace, joy and good will among people loss can and does happen.   The shock that comes with sudden loss takes away the ability to feel the warmth of the holidays (if it existed to begin with).   Loss is something that we usually do survive regardless of when it comes.