Thankfulness in Tragedy
Thanksgiving week is over. And in a way I am glad. That's very weird — I’m back to work tomorrow, family has gone home, the house is quiet, and the once overflowing refrigerator of calorie stuffed leftovers is about empty. I’ve never felt on the last Sunday of November “whew glad that's over with”. But I do, sorta…
This of course is our first Thanksgiving in 21 years without Daniel. The seven month anniversary of his death was Wednesday. (why isn’t that Thanksgiving Eve?) It fell right as family arrived and the house smelled of fabulous cooking prepping for the big feast day. Everyone says “the firsts are the hardest” — this was our first big Holiday. Done. But of course now the first Christmas is a freight train coming around the bend to urgently deliver its own cacophony of emotions.
It seems like you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t on holidays with a profoundly missing loved one. Pretend like nothing happened and proceed according the usual plans? That seems like you are disrespecting their memory and living a bit of lie. But should you intentionally be unhappy, be hermits, or stage difficult remembrances? That seems like self sabotage. Neither feels right, and in fact even a mix of the two doesn’t feel right. So I can chalk up stepping on yet another mental landmine in the post suicide landscape. I do take comfort from the long time members of the Survivors of Suicide support group I have attended. They unanimously say there is no right answer for the holidays. None.
By inertia, we did closer to the “normal” extreme this past week. We had our usual gathering at our house with the same traditions and most of the same family. And as the “man of the house”, as we sat down to the table I led the searingly incomplete group in prayer. At that time my mind was pounding more with the incredibly painful absence from the table more than anything else. But I had mentally prepared for this prayer for some time.
I am thankful for Jesus and my faith, and the profound difference it makes in my life, made in Daniel’s life, and how it surrounds the rest of my family. Lori and I have family that unconditionally loves and supports us. We both have a large and dynamic groups of friends who would (and did) proverbially run through the brick wall for us. We have financial security, our health, and our older two boys are doing well “adulting” in their 20s. COVID has not seriously effected anyone in our inner circles. We are days away from closing on a beach house, which is a lifelong dream. And despite the nails-on-the-chalkboard-screeching misery of the 2020 election cycle, we do live in the best country at arguably the best time to be alive, this year excepted.
So I have much to be thankful for, but the emotional world I wake up in is more often than not a damp, dark, and drizzly winter’s day of grief. I am profoundly not thankful for losing Daniel in such a horrible way. I am not thankful, in fact resentful, about the pandemic. It had a toll on our lost son, it horribly complicated and blunted the normal grief process for all of Daniel’s community, and of course is the source of so many tragic deaths across the world.
So what does it all mean? Did we do this week “right”? I don’t know. And that’s OK. It is not easy at all for me to sail uncharted through life. But grief is a current that takes you where it wants, and if you fight it too hard you will just drown.
Thanksgiving 2020 found our family thankful, as best we could be, while we drifted through the the whitecaps of sadness to find, someday, the new normal.