A Second Year Without Dad: Moving On and The Emotions of Traditions.

The scene that got me thinking was in the first week of November.  The usual radio station in Louisville started playing all Christmas music, and I was listening to it.  After I dropped my son off at his high school I drove down one of the picturesque streets in the Louisville Highlands that looked like the Chicago suburb backgrounds of the Home Alone film and other John Hughes movies.  The combined sights and sounds hit me that it was a second holiday season without dad. 

As you live your life without someone no longer there, part of the grief process is you eventually develop acceptance: you find ways of filling the metaphorical hole in your life.   If you are not filling the hole, you are going in other directions so you don’t just keep living in the pain.  

Examples of Not Moving On and Not Accepting

It was a moment of reflection about how I was doing on this one.    In my business, of course I learned from my patients about what it means to fail to accept someone’s death and continue to live in the pain (I’ve changed some details to protect their confidentiality).

The first was a patient I worked with eight years ago who talked about making her whole house a shrine to her deceased son.  The son had a debilitating condition and she was his caretaker for his entire life.   She had pictures of him everywhere.  She came to group reporting she was always crying. She eventually disclosed she had created a shrine that she had been staring at for years.

 A second example of living in the pain was a depressed woman who lost her infant. She admitted that she had continued to sleep with her infant’s ashes. 

 A third example is a guy who put his son to bed and woke up two months later in a hospital.  It turned out that there was a house fire and his son died and he did not know it until he woke up out of a coma.  He continued to use drugs and had several admissions to the hospital.   When talking to him, he stated his continued feel of guilt about surviving.  Even though it was a rental house and the fire was caused by electrical wiring, and there was no logical or rational fault of his in the situation but  he continued to live in the grief years afterwards.

As for me, whenever I still pass by battery-operated sound effect toys in places like World Market, I still think about how Dad would have liked it.  It is only a few seconds to remember that Dad has gone.  Sometimes I am tempted to buy one of the laser sounding toys and play with it for a few minutes in memory of Dad, but it doesn’t otherwise thrill me.   I suppose that I have been moving on pretty well.

Moving On at Christmas and the Challenge of Traditions

As I think about moving on at Christmas and the holidays, I have concluded that it is harder because of the family traditions.  Traditions are habits with a little more significance.  They are symbolic experiences of our relationships and connection.  They tie our shared past to our shared present.  When a loved one (especially who made the tradition happen) has gone, it can start to represent the emptiness or the void in our relationships. 

Changing what traditions mean is very hard because we don’t go at them rationally, but emotionally.  Emotional thinking is automatic, and thus we don’t really think slowly and factually about the holidays.  But, we are very quick as human beings to go immediately to the sad and mad feelings and we sink in the depression of the situation.

So, assuming that you are reading this because you are looking for something and want something, I am not sure what I have anything more to offer you than the following: if you and your family are observing a tradition that otherwise has a painful side to it, try to live in the moment and focus on what it means to your current relationships.

You and I have the power to determine what holiday traditions mean now.  Kept traditions represent our family histories and memories of the loved one or ones with whom we have shared the experience.

However, traditions also bond us now to the people we love and call family now.   If no one else wants to share a particular tradition, it may be an opportunity for acceptance and moving on in the creation of a new holiday tradition.    

As for me, my little nuclear family has developed a few traditions around my 15-year-old’s apathy and resistance to getting away from his computer. We’ll do church and get Domino’s Pizza on Christmas Eve.  We’ll watch one or two movie versions of A Christmas Carol. We will invite others over for a pizza party on New Year’s Eve for the fourth straight year, and we’ll get Chinese food on New Year’s Day.  Those practices are not exactly Christmas-y, but they are traditions at this time of year that bond us.     

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. 

The Hypnotic State of Ruminating on Grief, Loss, and Family Dysfunction at Christmas

Much of the last several weeks have been busy.  I came up with ideas to write about but could not develop them until I went Christmas shopping with my wife this past Friday night at the mall.

Yes, I wanted to write more about grief and loss over those we loved who have passed.  I thought about the service of memories I went to where my church remembered the 22 people who had died during 2016.  I thought about continuing about reflecting on my continued life without my father who died Labor Day 2015.  But I found myself engaging in my different coping methods aka working on my other writing project and being busy at work.

When our life is not about family matters we are fine, but our mind turns sour when we think about family.  Well, back to Friday night, a time where I was slowing down and thinking about family and Christmas. 

It was pretty frustrating looking for a Christmas gift for some avoidant family members. They rarely call. They are controlling as to when they come.  They do not invite us to their house and so I have not talked with them in about two years.  I do not know what they currently like or are interested in. I was trying to show loving thoughtfulness and I found myself feeling frustrated for most of the shopping trip.  

Two posts ago, I wrote about avoidant family members.  Yes, their avoidance is best not taken personally, but this experience of walking through shopping malls going from store to store brought to mind how consumed we can get in emotion thinking about them.  Depending on how much power the avoidant family members have, we can find ourselves ruminating hours upon hours upon the sad, sorry state of our relationships or our losses.

Ruminating is one of those hypnotic states we can get sucked into until we decide to stop.  Ruminating can go on for hours or days.   Ruminating seems to be easier with higher levels of sadness and anger. Ruminating is also easier when there is nothing else going on.  As we ruminate upon issues that are never going to be resolved we unknowingly compound our emotions.

Despite any elegant analysis or description of such situation, the compounded emotion when ruminating is brutal and robs us of both time and energy.   When we ruminate it can be like diving into a pool of emotion and it is hard to get out of the pool because the water is warmer than the air temperature. 

The Challenge

The obvious coping skill with ruminating is to stop it.  It is a matter of not thinking about the painful subject matter, or at least getting our minds off of things that we cannot solve.  At least for Christmas, it is helpful to read or watch movies, or the old classic--go volunteer somewhere. 

Such painful subjects are indeed tough to put out of our minds. We may have to play a head game with ourselves that it is not doing any good to dwell on the dysfunctional family members or the people who are no longer with us.   The first line of defense is recognizing that ruminating about emotional topics can make us get into a hypnotic state of emotion if we them let them.

Deprivation and Sorrow

                The late Furman Bisher (1918-2012) wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2008 about his austere Christmases in Georgia as a child.  Everyone was poor in his community and they got oranges as treats at Christmas.  Bisher wrote that his wife had just bought him a little red bicycle for Christmas so he would not be the only one to have not gotten one.   Cute, but I wonder whether that gesture really healed any hurt or filled any hole in his psyche.

Many of us, if not all of us can point to some form of deprivation that we have suffered in our lives.  Deprivation often has a physical connotation, but if we were to look at Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we may have all had some kind of deprivation of our emotional needs, and it probably bugs some of us on a recurring basis. 

Deprivation is the lack or denial of something considered to be a necessity.   It seems likely that not all the deprivation that we have experienced bugs us, but a few things that really mattered rear their ugly heads at one time or another.  When it bugs us, it is more than grief—it is chronic sorrow because it comes up again and again.   The holidays are one of those times when it comes up again and again.

Not everything that we have been deprived of holds the same weight, and hopefully we do not dwell on it all the time, but some of this deprivation was a significant enough hut that we have some moments of deep sadness and re-living of pain.  If it is not sadness, we relive the anger.

There are family members who may have deprived us of traditions and recognition.  They may have not invited us to weddings or they treat us like family secrets.  They may never invite us over to their house and avoid us.   They demonstrate by actions that they treat other family members as favored and us as the red-headed step-child.

Peers from school days may have deprived us of the respect that we needed. Maybe we were picked on, teased and bullied, and they did not realize that they were hurting us instead of being funny. It still amazes me that a 73-year-old South Dakota man shot his high school bully dead in 2012 over a jock-strap prank from over 50 years earlier.  Some people do hold onto the pain and sorrow from such deprivation and go to such extremes.

Employers may have deprived us of raises and promotions and recognitions.  The average employee who has been with an employer for a long time has typically felt unappreciated by the employer (https://www.eremedia.com/tlnt/heres-why-your-employees-are-just-not-that-into-you/). Promotions are being given to younger yes-men and yes-women who play the political game versus those who have done good work and have been faithful employees.

Churches also tend to betray and disrespect a number of members by not supporting them in times of trouble and by failing to recognize special events and graduations.  Pastors did not come when you needed them.  Churches put your graduation as an “omitted degree” instead of recognizing you like others in the Sunday morning worship.  Some of this disrespect is ignorance and some of it is blatant politics.   Many people leave churches because they felt deprived of the meeting of those necessary emotional needs (telling the music minister how mad you are at him tends to be worthless and leaving is just easier to get away from the pain).

Colleges and Universities may change their policy and deprive graduates of traditions that have been going on and on for previous years.  Certain degrees may not recognized in commencement because of some agenda to down play the president’s idiocy in handling a controversy over allowing a guy who attended less than a semester to be granted a Ph.D.

At the holidays the sorrow over deprivations can be more acute.  Christmas tends to bring out the inner child in each of us in good and bad ways.  Yes, our inner child will sing along with silly Christmas songs.  But the inner child hurts with the rumination of the deprivation we have suffered because the real world has kicked our butts and made us cynical.

I don’t have any easy answers but to say other than for many of us, the pain of current and past deprivation at Christmas is real. The chronic sorrow over deprivations from childhood and deprivations in more recent years does happen.  I suppose that we have to recognize it when it happens and try to get our minds off of it as best as we can, but after awhile it tends to be worthless to talk about it with family and spouses because they are tired of you talking about it and tell you to let it go.  

                We live in the present, and sometimes it is a struggle, especially during the holidays.  

It isn't about you: The avoidant ones we want to talk to.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States.  (Canada has its Thanksgiving day the second Monday of October.)  It was created by President Abraham Lincoln to be a day of giving thanks to the “Creator.”   Between Christmas and Thanksgiving, the latter is the preferred gathering day for families.  

Other than eating too much food, families are supposed to have some kind of interaction.  The interaction is where the problem tends to be.  Of course there has been discussion about what happens when people drink too much and say regretful things.  There is little about the avoidant family member who does not talk or shies away from being around family.

The avoidant person may be us.  I do appreciate that given family dysfunction and trauma, some avoidant people have such a strong aversion to being around family in the name of self-preservation and PTSD.   The one staying away may be the one hiding in shame or anger.

      There will be avoidant family members who are reluctantly there but choosing to be avoidant of others because they want to avoid the typical drama.  They don’t want to be around the uncle or other family member who has had two “Rum and Pepsi’s” by dinner and has finished the bottle of rum off by 6pm.  

There are a few who seem to be arrogant.  You go up to them and say hello and they avoid making any kind of response other than a vague utterance and they walk away.   You might try a second time and they repeat what they just did.

However, there are some avoidant family members who are hard to figure out.  They act in such controlling ways that they just do not talk or even return phone calls.  If they come to see others when you are not there or they drive through your city not stopping to say hello.  Maybe you are in their city and you call them to see if you can come by and they tell you that they are sick.   They seem to do everything to be avoidant.

The main question that most ask in response is: why are they doing this?  The answer that many ask in response is “Did I do something?”   They may answer themselves again by saying, “I must have done something or they would not be acting like this.”    They engage in personalization.

Personalization

            Personalization is what has been called a thinking error.  It is taking responsibility for something that is not your fault. Or it may be taking more responsibility for what happened than is yours to take.

            The classic form of personalization that I see in my work is the adolescent to takes it personally that someone insults his or her mother or father or family.  Some insulting peer goes “Your momma” and the personalizing adolescent hits the peer.  The adolescent has taken upon himself or herself that he or she is the defender of the family.

            Another classic form of personalization is to say “I must have done something or they would not have acted that way.”    Maybe someone gives you a dirty look or is rude to you and if you personalize it the conclusion is that you must be at fault for something.

            The reality is that just because someone gives you a dirty look or is rude to you it only means they gave you a dirty look or were rude.  It does not mean that you did anything.   Some people are just rude and give dirty looks.   They did it because they did it.   Neal Peart, the lyricist for Rush aptly wrote in the song Roll the Bones “Why does it happen?  Because it happens.”

Reframing it back to your family

            So, if you are going to be around avoidant family members you can be less distressed by stopping trying to analyze why they are avoidant.  It may be a friendly measure to go up to them and try to have friendly small talk and see if they talk, but if they withdraw, they withdraw.  The avoidant family member is choosing to be avoidant because they are choosing to be avoidant because they are anxious or guarded from previous family spats on the holidays. 

            Just a disclaimer here, if you are going up to the avoidant one  to yell at them, call them something that sounds like “Ice Hole” or tease them for their behavior last holiday, I would not blame them  for avoiding you.    We are not responsible for the feelings and choices of family members, but we are responsible for what we say and what we do and we may get some consequences.

            One more thought about the avoidant family member: they may be a bunch of vacant space not worth knowing.  I have found that many avoidant people are bitter control freaks . . .  nothing more and nothing less.  They control by isolating and they do not let anyone into their lives except for those they can control.  Talking with them is woefully unfulfilling because there is nothing to connect on with them.   

Concluding Thoughts: It isn’t about you.

            It isn’t about you when it comes to the avoidant family member.  Most normal people will talk and make effort to connect with others at family gatherings tomorrow.   If you make an effort to connect with the typically avoidant family member tomorrow and it bombs, at least you tried.   If the avoidant family member otherwise claims that you are in their space or are bothering them, just let them be in their own private world.   There are better things to do with your holiday experience such as being with the family members that want to talk and play than be consumed by the avoidant family member’s reclusiveness. 

Grief a Second Year.

My father died Labor Day 2015.  I have made a full circle for myself in terms of going through the different holidays and other significant events of the year.   I have gone on in the year being mindful most of the time.  There have been a few surprise grief-related issues that have come up with regards to my family, but I do not have the liberty to describe them here, but I will talk about mine.  This aims to be tastefully real and discuss  what is therapist tested and approved.  

For 10 years prior to my father’s death I had been mindful that there would be a day he would no longer be around.  I made sure that I hugged him and told him I loved him when I saw him and when I said good-bye.  We had some meaningful times together within our ability to have them.  He did get to read my textbook that I wrote and published and he stated his approval of it.  We departed on a good note and I have no regrets.

As I look back through the previous year, I think that I did fairly well and awkward was the operative word.  The toughest week was the week after his death where it felt like I had concrete shoes.  From having seen others in shock, I told myself that this was grief and that the shock of such matters can be physical too.  Christmas and Thanksgiving were merely on the awkward side because of the changes that a phone call to dad and a gift for Dad were not in the cards and Mom had moved from Florida to Indiana just before Christmas.

 Fathers Day was the harder of the different “holidays.  I don’t have any specific answers as to why it was harder, but it just was melancholy. 

The Grass Fire

The memory of the grassfire in 1978 was what affected me most in the past year.  I will be real here and disclose that on my father’s first birthday after his death I thought about this.  On a sunny day in late October the Rock Island rail line ignited a large grassfire during dry conditions that burned about a quarter mile until it got to our place.  I remember the low black clouds and hearing the sirens get closer and bringing it to my father’s attention.  We got some shovels and went the quarter-mile back to the back fence line.

      When we got back there my dad jumped over the back fence and went down and around the fire line on our neighbor’s property to see if he could help.  I remembered that the Altoona Iowa Fire Chief drove on our property to survey the situation and then he left.  A little while later the fire came roaring up like the ocean tide engulfing me in a cloud of hot smoke leaving me choking. It was just me alone and I was afraid.

 I remember tucking tail and running and then saying a prayer and running back at the fire.  I don’t ‘think that I was a great or even good firefighter but I beat out what flames I could along a line in several places and the fire stopped about four to five feet inside our property. I was thankful that Dad came walking back after the fire had died. We spent the rest of the day putting out hot spots.  I look back now and think that because we mowed our hay and the neighbor hadn’t, the fire simply died out for lack of fuel. 

It surprised me how much I remembered the story and how it much it affected me. I also look back and I am reminded that I was in perhaps greater danger than I realized and that there were angels protecting me.  

Looking Ahead with my Family and Coping

         Memories aside from the past year and the past period, I look into the second trip through the calendar of grief and I have discovered that my family and I are not handling things the same way.  Things have gotten a little more complicated in ways with regards to new family drama given the changes. 

         With some changes come new discoveries.  People are getting into others spaces and having unforeseen conflict in the crossing of boundaries.  There are strange and awkward discussions about what did not used to get talked about.  New information about old situations gets disclosed. Family members show emotion that they did not show previously.  It is a mixture of amusement, bewilderment, and further shock.   

        I figure my family is like other families.  There is nothing that weird about my family. Of course every family has its secrets, but there is nothing new under the sun.  We are just embarrassed about our family secrets and there are subjects that we avoid talking about because it is just better that way.

        I have been a fan of Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) because we enter into situations with beliefs and thoughts and emotions.  The essence of REBT is that we can change our thoughts and beliefs when we go into situations and come out with less negative feelings and less stress.   It is a usable theory in terms of teaching a method of how to cope.

       In line with REBT I hold that we wear those beliefs, thoughts and emotions as glasses.  It is akin to the adage of someone wearing “rose-colored” glasses to describe someone who is foolishly seeing things as too positive.  With grief and loss, the glasses are dark like sunglasses and we tend to see everything as dark and gray.

With our families and grief, we may have to craft our own eyeglasses to look at things as they come along.  We may have to prepare and choose to practice thinking certain thoughts and beliefs as they express emotions and do grief their way.  We don’t have to own their feelings, in fact it is better if we don’t. 

     My REBT eyeglasses have been the following.  My family members will act in the ways they will act.  They will do what they are going to do. I do not control what they do.  I don’t have to own what they do.  Sometimes grief is just grief and there does not have to be any more to it than that.  Maybe the holidays will end up being on the difficult side but they are not impossible and they end January 2.

Concluding Thoughts:
    I hope that this is helpful to you in thinking about grief and coping with the feelings.  Feel free to look back through the blog for things that may be of interest to you.

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.