My Nan died on New Year’s Eve and the Long Suffering Husband’s mum watched the millennium fireworks from her hospital bed, shortly before her death. New Year has therefore always been a miserable time for my family. I would hate to forever ruin Christmas for my loved ones with an untimely death.
Christmas, being a time for reflection, is particularly hard when you have lost someone. Standing in the men’s jumper section of Marks and Spencer with tears in your eyes or opening your cookbook to have your mum’s recipe for a Christmas sauce fall out can fell you, like a tree cut at the knees. You realise that you’ll never again be able to buy a salmon pink jumper that is truly appreciated or call up to check if there really is that much brandy in the recipe and you feel lost. Your frame of reference for life has gone. When both parents have died nothing can quite prepare you for how much you feel like a little lost girl again. You thought you were a fully fledged adult but you couldn’t have been more wrong.
The run up to Christmas is such a busy time and we place enormous pressure on ourselves to make it perfect, or at least, better than last year. Each year carries special memories that get woven into each other, traditions that simply have to be observed and pressure for the people trying to hold it all together. The recently bereaved can find all of this a little overwhelming.
This year, I have found these things particularly hard.
1. Being too busy. There is not enough time for reflection and just being with my own thoughts. I
think this is part of the healing process. My counsellor warned against it but I didn’t listen. “I’m an
all or nothing kind of girl,” I told her.
2. Cooking. Apart from the factor of the first point, this is the season of parties and ‘bring a plate of food.’ My go-to Mum’s Lemon Drizzle doesn’t seem the best thing to bring anymore. Appetite can take a while to come back after a bereavement and Christmas is all about food. “Have you ordered the turkey or are we having something different this year?” the LSH asks hopefully. It is tempting to suggest beans on toast.
3. Chocolates. ‘‘Tis the season of the Quality Street tin on the sideboard. I can’t quite explain why this and the Radio Times Christmas edition makes me feel so sad. Also, when you are too busy (see point 1) they become your most important food group. Last night, I had time to cook a proper meal (lamb hotpot), unwrapped the lamb stock cube and popped it into my mouth. Lamb stock cubes and caramel swirls do not taste the same.
4. People. People are wrapped up in their own busyness and can, without meaning, trample all over your feelings. People take a lot of my energy and because of point one I don’t have any spare.
5. Old people’s homes. As as musician it is traditional to take children to care homes to torture old folk with their singing. It never occurred to me that staring into the eyes of dying old ladies would be so triggering. Oh, and their pianos are terrible.
6. Churches. Musicians spend a lot of time in church at Christmas. It is particularly challenging to co-ordinate a church service with all the music for a whole school, with people who are too wrapped up with their own problems to give you much of a hand, in the church where your parents funerals were. It’s impossible to just look at the ceiling fighting back tears when your choir is standing where your mum’s coffin was only seven months ago when they are looking expectantly for direction and encouragement.
Our school Christmas church service is the thing I find most stressful and so if you see me and I don’t talk to you, or worse still snap at you please forgive me and remember that I ate a lamb stock cube last night thinking it was a chocolate.
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