The Loneliest Season
Coping with loss during the holidays
My brother Mitch lost his husband in October. A blood clot; gone in an instant. “God needed Joe for other things,” explained Mitch, not one usually given to spirituality.
I’ve been thinking about grief lately. How you cope with great loss, and particularly how you cope during the holiday season.
Neighbours lost their 8-year-old daughter in a freak accident. I was walking my dog yesterday when the husband stopped me. He wants a companion for his son. Did I recommend our dog’s breed? We talk for a few minutes. He says his family is in a better place but first they had to let grief totally flatten them.
I can’t help but think the holidays must be brutal.
My brother spent the first month after his husband’s death at home in shock, half expecting Joe to come around a corner. Then, just before Thanksgiving, Mitch boarded a flight to Hawaii. He’s not there for the beach. Hawaii was among his husband’s favorite places. Mitch is there, he says, to pay Joe’s kindness forward.
Mitch’s husband was a generous soul. He was the kind of person who planted flowers in other people’s gardens. The two lived in Myanmar where Joe made a garden around their rental house. Finished, he cleared the overgrown land adjacent to their property, which…
