Melancholidays

Another way to celebrate

There are a lot of different names for the holidays. A friend and I were recently chatting about the Christmastime chaos and every once in a while I might ask how her “Chaos-mas” is going, only because I physically cannot resist puns. The other night as I described the potential for burn out this time of year, I blundered my words per usual and came out with this fun hybrid: Frazzle dazzle. Sean thought it was a festive way to say Christmas chaos.

My friend and I chatted about the initial surge of Christmas joy we feel. The seasonal turning, a shift into fun and tradition and lights and gifts and thoughts of what we want and what we want to give, sharing with others, all the myriad ways to celebrate.

But we also talked about this surprising feeling that has co-occurred with this. For me it is one of overwhelm (unsurprising) but also one that feels a lot like… grief. And I never know quite what to do with it.

It comes out of nowhere: Maybe you suddenly find yourself in a certain situation in life and you’re faced with this forced reconciliation. Suddenly all the Christmases from before coming rushing back to haunt you, bombarding and burying you under this nostalgic entanglement of feelings that have been layered into your memory and being from holidays past. Tethered to it all, it is easy to want to run from it, or succumb.

But it’s strange and I’ve been feeling it coming on more strongly the past few years. And I struggle to define. Maybe it’s the complicated interweaving of happy and sad, intensified by the season.

Chaos-mas. Christmas Grief (sounds kind of like wreath? Maybe?) Melancholidays. (Melancholy and the ivy? I’ve gotta stop. But you know you’re singing it now) All of these feel insufficient but I couldn’t find a better name. But then a friend posted a definition that gave me a word for this and I so love borrowing words:

HIRAETH
(pronounced [hee-righth] but roll the ‘r.’ I am learning Welsh is kinda crazy. I feel like I just accidentally spoke Elvish.)

Follow this account. You won’t be sorry.

A distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost. Like a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, deep nostalgia, yearning or grief for the lost places of your past - the unique blend of place, time and people that can never be recreated. Unattainable longing.

For me, this hiraeth hit when I pulled out some decorations and saw, in an instant, Julian’s entire childhood come tumbling out and bowled me right over. I have not yet figured out what to do with these hurling objects that, through the chemical process of time + love, have since taken on more complicated reaction than I anticipated at its origin, that it had the potential of obtaining as bonds were made and continually activated.

As usual for me, science (+ a little fiction) = religion and what it really felt like was staring into the arc of the covenant. It was more than I could bear and before my face melted off, I took out a few things, quickly shut the box, and removed it from my sight.

It’s shocking how hard and suddenly it hits. Grief was always thus, striking like a stray bullet that I wish I had a shield to deflect. But I don’t and, though it is painful, I’ve dabbled in the practice of leaning in and I don’t know if I even want one.

This Christmas we hosted an event where we were to present a favorite tradition. I decided to go with a fave and display Christmas cards from past years. I went down to the tomb of boxed up memories aka the basement, and raided the one containing all of our saved cards going all the way back to the beginning. Except for a couple of years, I had them all, and I dated the ones that weren’t dated and lined them up chronologically on the kitchen counter.

Seeing tiny, adorable, dimply Julian of course speared through my very heart/being, but guess what? I found that staring at the pictures like this, stacked side-by-side, organized in such a way that showed from year-to-year what we’ve been lucky to have together, felt surprisingly healing. Not a shield I have been looking for but a balm.

I said to myself, Look at this timeline! This is not nothing. This is a lot. Look what we got to do and see and watch grow.

Doing this allowed me to take the shapeless grief-mass and turn it into matter organized, one filled with meaning, a marker of something gained and not just lost to the abyss of time.

It sometimes seems as though sad things happen a lot at Christmastime. It feels so unfair when they do. But I’m thinking that maybe they aren’t more frequent as they are pronounced, made more significant because they are held and stacked in the same space as joy and miracles. And I wonder if a transfer can be made here, of the complex feelings of Christmas heightened by the holiness of loss. I am reminded once again of the wholeness of brokenness.

A few days ago I attended the funeral of an uncle. As Sean said to me, “funerals are for the living” and I was very glad to be there for my mom and her sister who just lost her husband, and for cousins who just lost their dad. I appreciated hearing the stories, memories, lessons learned, all of it a complex mix of love and pain. I was grateful they included it all— not just the happy. Cousins shared poetry, funny stories and associations, stories with painful subtext, interweaving the challenges of mortality and the inherence of human flaws with acceptance and love. I watched them come together and take stock as a collective build, each piecing together a part of what made up their relationships, individually and as a whole. Strengthened by the hard + good, taking each element and co-creating an alloy of love with it all. And it gave me an opportunity to do the same.

So maybe we can actually do something about the irretrievable loss, the hiraeth. Maybe we can take the emblems that represent what we’ve lost and organize or incorporate them into something purposeful, overturning the shelved contents of Pandora’s Box and turning it into a totem. Important things stacked as markers of experience, preciousness built on preciousness to construct a reminder of your of your life and creation in all its glory.

So to all who are in the midst of sorrow this season, this one’s for you. In the words of C.S. Lewis: Courage, dear heart. A time when joy is heralded can also be one of willing ourselves to be joyful. I’m learning t’is the season of love and loss. And with this pronounced awareness of things Here and things Not Here, I hope to make peace with the other half—perhaps more important half—of Christmas. And look to the Balm to be had. Maybe observing tragedy along with tradition makes for a truer kind of Christmas.

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