My youngest commented to a FB post recently with this gif:
These days I am struggling to keep my balance. My traditions, especially my holiday traditions, have anchored me for decades. They weren't always comfortable to keep. There were times when holidays, especially Thanksgiving, were fraught with chaos and tears. My eldest son (whom I forgave for his schizophrenia) used to say it wasn't Thanksgiving until he made me cry. But the things, the rituals that I built for my family in those days, that's what the glue was that held it all together for me.
Thanksgiving is a special day of ritual for me; it's the start of the Christmas season. Christmas, to me, means family and reconnecting and reasserting that we have that love, that connection. I admit, ofttimes the visible manifestation of that connection comes wrapped and has a bow on it. But the rituals of Thanksgiving, for me, aren't to be messed with.
It starts the same every year: I get up early, prepare a buffet breakfast to be eaten as we watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then, promptly at noon, Santa appears in front of Macy's. The TV goes off, the Christmas music comes on, and we put up the tree and decorate the home. Then it's sitting down together for a Thanksgiving meal, and taking turns listing the things we were thankful for this past year. Then it's the rest of the dog show, and snoozing in a tryptophan induced stupor.
The day moves like clockwork, despite any tears, burnt food, arguments over who gets to hang what ornament, or getting the cat out of the tree. Tick tick tick, the movement like hands on a clock, purposeful and almost meditative despite the chaos of emotion and the broken ornament and the tangled lights.
The traditions anchor me. The traditions help me keep my balance. And so I've kept them when the kids moved out.
Even then, I could count on at least one of them being with me at Christmas. I've only spent one Christmas alone. And this year it's all being turned on it's ear when I need stability the most.
I will never see Ellen again.
Ellen made her own traditions with her husband, Carlos. Some of them (like giving the animals a special canned food meal of turkey) she kept, but others, like the parade, she dismissed. As late risers, they decided that the Dog Show was the anchor to the day, not the Parade. The cats became the focus in lieu of children, and everything anchored around that.
This year, I've invited Carlos to have Thanksgiving here. He wants to keep the traditions he had with Ellen. I want to keep the traditions I had with my kids. It's not going to work, for either of us. He was so upset, I couldn't say no to him bringing his cats, although it means litter mess, more cat hair, and hours of Pearl and Cinnamon chasing each other around the little apartment, barking and hissing, while Carlos yells "No, Cinnamon, NO!" even though he knows Pearl instigated it, simply because it's more likely that Cinnamon will obey than Pearl. Cinnamon is no saint, but worrying about stressing Pearl while yelling at Cinnamon pisses me off, and I probably need to tell him that.
And then I think maybe it's just another bit of chaos that will go by as the tick tick tick of tradition moves forward, if I just keep it going, just hold tight to the anchor.
These past few months have been about addressing everyone else's pain before my own. My physical pain (which will increase for the season after next Monday's surgery) and my emotional pain for Ellen's loss, as well as once again being far from any of my children. Right now, all I'm doing for others in my life can no longer hold back the floods of pain and grief. I know there are a couple people who still feel the need to usurp my grief and center their own, as well as a drove of well meaning people who want to tell me I'm not alone, and give me advise on how I should feel and how I should process my grief.
These days I am struggling to keep my balance. My traditions, especially my holiday traditions, have anchored me for decades. They weren't always comfortable to keep. There were times when holidays, especially Thanksgiving, were fraught with chaos and tears. My eldest son (whom I forgave for his schizophrenia) used to say it wasn't Thanksgiving until he made me cry. But the things, the rituals that I built for my family in those days, that's what the glue was that held it all together for me.
Thanksgiving is a special day of ritual for me; it's the start of the Christmas season. Christmas, to me, means family and reconnecting and reasserting that we have that love, that connection. I admit, ofttimes the visible manifestation of that connection comes wrapped and has a bow on it. But the rituals of Thanksgiving, for me, aren't to be messed with.
It starts the same every year: I get up early, prepare a buffet breakfast to be eaten as we watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then, promptly at noon, Santa appears in front of Macy's. The TV goes off, the Christmas music comes on, and we put up the tree and decorate the home. Then it's sitting down together for a Thanksgiving meal, and taking turns listing the things we were thankful for this past year. Then it's the rest of the dog show, and snoozing in a tryptophan induced stupor.
The day moves like clockwork, despite any tears, burnt food, arguments over who gets to hang what ornament, or getting the cat out of the tree. Tick tick tick, the movement like hands on a clock, purposeful and almost meditative despite the chaos of emotion and the broken ornament and the tangled lights.
The traditions anchor me. The traditions help me keep my balance. And so I've kept them when the kids moved out.
Even then, I could count on at least one of them being with me at Christmas. I've only spent one Christmas alone. And this year it's all being turned on it's ear when I need stability the most.
I will never see Ellen again.
Ellen made her own traditions with her husband, Carlos. Some of them (like giving the animals a special canned food meal of turkey) she kept, but others, like the parade, she dismissed. As late risers, they decided that the Dog Show was the anchor to the day, not the Parade. The cats became the focus in lieu of children, and everything anchored around that.
This year, I've invited Carlos to have Thanksgiving here. He wants to keep the traditions he had with Ellen. I want to keep the traditions I had with my kids. It's not going to work, for either of us. He was so upset, I couldn't say no to him bringing his cats, although it means litter mess, more cat hair, and hours of Pearl and Cinnamon chasing each other around the little apartment, barking and hissing, while Carlos yells "No, Cinnamon, NO!" even though he knows Pearl instigated it, simply because it's more likely that Cinnamon will obey than Pearl. Cinnamon is no saint, but worrying about stressing Pearl while yelling at Cinnamon pisses me off, and I probably need to tell him that.
And then I think maybe it's just another bit of chaos that will go by as the tick tick tick of tradition moves forward, if I just keep it going, just hold tight to the anchor.
These past few months have been about addressing everyone else's pain before my own. My physical pain (which will increase for the season after next Monday's surgery) and my emotional pain for Ellen's loss, as well as once again being far from any of my children. Right now, all I'm doing for others in my life can no longer hold back the floods of pain and grief. I know there are a couple people who still feel the need to usurp my grief and center their own, as well as a drove of well meaning people who want to tell me I'm not alone, and give me advise on how I should feel and how I should process my grief.
I know how to deal with stress, with pain, with grief. I've been fiddling on the roof for decades.
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