Holiday Heartache It’s Possible To Honor Lost Loved Ones And Hang Decorations Instead Of Your Head

First there was the loss. And now, the holidays. The problem for those who are grieving is: How am I ever going to get through this?

Apprehension, if not dread, is likely. But there are ways to manage, even benefit.

The essential tactic is to have a plan, say people who work with the bereaved. (And much of what is advised for people adjusting to a death applies to people adjusting to a divorce.)

Elsie Baker is a grief counselor in Ohio who trained in the field for the most terrible reasons: the death of her two children from cystic fibrosis, her son in 1974, her daughter in 1983.

“Even if you think you’re over most of your grieving, it comes back around the holidays,” says Baker. “You just have to prepare yourself and have some kind of a game plan to get yourself through. Your tendency is to just feel helpless, that there’s nothing you can do. And there is nothing that’s going to take all the pain away. But we do have some ability to fortify ourselves and help ourselves.”

On holidays, people tend to either be consumed by the loss or try to avoid it, says Jack Corazzini, a clinical psychologist who is director of university counseling services at Virginia Commonwealth University. “The more they try to avoid it, of course, the more present it becomes.”

Especially if there are children involved, he says, “you’ve got to do both - you’ve got to be able to remember the loved one that is very much a part of your family, and you’ve got to go on and be able to celebrate the day for the rest of the family.”

“You need to honor the person who has died, include them in the celebration,” Baker says. “And make that known to people. Because most people think they’re going to help you through by acting like the person never existed. That’s just the worst thing people can do.” Baker is author, under the name Meg Woodson, of “Making It Through the Toughest Days of Grief” (Harper), a very personal account. (When she began writing, she used the pseudonym to protect her daughter’s privacy.)

The experts suggest putting aside a time to recall the loved one, either as part of the gathering or a trip to the cemetery. “Tell some stories, say a prayer, remember. If in your remembering people cry or people get upset, so be it,” Corazzini says. Then move on to the next part of the day. “Put a boundary around it.”

In her book, Baker writes, “It feels good to cry long and hard on Christmas Day.” She also writes, “It feels good to feel merry as well as teary on Christmas Day,” and “It feels good to give thanks on Christmas Day.”

It’s also very useful to observe the holiday in a different way - either by gathering at another’s home, having the meal at a different time, even just substituting one dish on the traditional menu. Doing so is symbolic of moving on.

“Introduce something new so that the absence of your loved one isn’t quite so stark,” Baker says. “Little things add up.”

It’s critical that people not try to keep the holidays as they were.

Accepting that things can’t be the same is a significant point in the process of grieving, says Thomas Cahill, a clinical psychologist who is director of behavioral science at La Grange Memorial Hospital in suburban Chicago. With the holidays, he says, “it can be good enough, it doesn’t have to be horrible, but it certainly can’t be the same.” This begins with the end of ruminations about how the loss could have been avoided - “If-this-had-happened, maybe-that-wouldn’t-havehappened” thinking.

“One of the major disappointments of the holidays is the attempt to recapture the magic of the past,” Corazzini says. “That leads to incredible disappointment.”

It helps to consider the purpose of the holidays, Cahill says, which is not really to have a great time. “None of them encourage people to escape life. … The holidays encourage people to accept what is pretty everyday, not to escape life but to enter into it more deeply - relationships, caring about family, being concerned about what really matters. That’s a lot of what Thanksgiving and the holidays have been set up to teach. Looking at the core meaning helps people a lot.”