I think many of us have traditions that we fondly remember from our childhood. Traditions are extra special during the holiday season. Maybe it is going to a Christmas Eve service and singing Christmas songs, opening presents around a beautiful tree on Christmas day with your children and grandchildren, singing carols together, or making cookies with someone special.
One thing is for certain as we grow older, traditions often change, especially when loved ones who started those traditions pass on.
For anyone who has lost a loved one, the holidays can be an especially emotional time. One where you reminisce of traditions and memories of simpler times, and you remember loved ones you do not get to celebrate with any longer. It can leave you feeling a painful void, one that you are uncertain how to fill.
One of the first times I experienced an especially difficult season was the holiday season of 2016. We had lost my husband’s mother earlier that year, and when the holidays came around, it hit us hard. Our traditions. All our traditions we had with her were no longer.
Dropping by to see her on Thanksgiving to celebrate her birthday, put up her tree, and eat some birthday pie, done.
Picking her up on Christmas Eve and driving around looking at the Christmas lights and illuminated bags that lined some of the sidewalks and driveways, done.
I would never hear her tell stories behind some of the Christmas ornaments, listen to her say her infamous thank you three times in a row after we put up the tree and stood around admiring it, or the stories she would share as we drove around the neighborhood looking at the Christmas displays again.
When someone passes, not all of this hits you at once, but it sure can come crashing in waves as the seasons pass and memories emerge. What can we do to help mend our broken hearts and still find the magic in the season?
We let the lives of those we love live on, and we do this by keeping their traditions alive.
It is so easy when you have children of your own to let the candle lighting the past flicker away. Having young children ourselves, we know that they will not remember Grandma, my husband’s mother. We will have to find ways to keep her memory alive, to keep the flames burning. We will set up our tree after Thanksgiving and we will put up our Grandma angel, we will talk about her and how much she loved her grandchildren. We will go out and look at Christmas lights, and we will talk about how she would light up and go on and on about how beautiful the decorations were. We will buy her favorite pie and we will raise a fork in her honor.
The holidays will still have moments of grief as we remember her, but with that grief will come waves of remembrance and joy. Laughter from good memories and smiles as her words echo in our hearts. We will also make sure to create new memories and traditions with our family. Traditions and memories for our children to look back on and remember us by.
