Have a Merry Little Christmas…

It’s been a tough year. We lost my father-in-law in January and my father in September. My dad had not been doing very well, and so his death was in some ways a blessing. And while that is a thing people say, and I do mean it, it also hurts like hell. We were always very close, and I miss him terribly, and with his passing I now also have no parents. Becoming a midlife orphan* is very disorienting, and for the last few months I’ve felt like a little lost sheep.

What a great Christmas message, eh? But when a friend who lost her son this summer told me recently that she wished she could just speed her way to January, I realized that we holiday-season mourners must number many.

There are those of us in fresher grief, our emotions still raw like bare skin exposed in the tundra, and others where it has mellowed into something kind of beautiful. I guess all adults have the latter, thinking of loved ones and memories from long ago, allowing for genuine smiles.

But for the raw grievers, it’s not too trite to say that it’s really, really hard at the holidays.

So what am I doing to cope? I’m sorting through old family photos to create gifts and watching the old home movies I edited last year as a gift to my dad and brother. I’m hanging up ornaments that were my parents and grandparents, as well as newer ones that my children created or from family vacations. I’m finding quietude in the twinkling lights in the deep dark, and I’m listening to sad Christmas songs – but not too many. Just a little, judiciously sprinkled here and there (like how I try to eat Christmas cookies!). I’m finding joy and pleasure at this year’s Jane Austen @ 250 coverage, and I’m reading Christmas novels on my Kobo (I like this list I found). I’m trying not to read the news too much and instead focus on reading, writing**, friends, and family.

How about you?

I’m trying to find beauty and peace in the world, and some days I think I’ve been successful.

I wish that for you as well, if not in actuality, then in your dreams.

Take good care of yourself,

Gina

*When I emptied my parents’ house about 18 months ago, I took a few of their books home with me. One was a book called Midlife Orphan by Jane Brooks, published in 1999, that my mother clearly had purchased after her father died (bless my grandpa – he lived to age 96). I found it so comforting to rediscover and read it this autumn, thinking my mother was still looking out for me.

**My Veronica Franco novel is still working her way into the world, while I have also begun research on a new novel in a very different setting, one that given the year I’ve just had, feels perfectly timed. More soon.