HUG Corner: Thought for the Week 12/25/17

December 25, 2017

Healing After Loss (Martha Whitmore Hickman)

“Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve.

The yule-log sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The Quiet sense of something lost”

– Alfred Tennyson

“Holidays are among the hardest times for those who have lost a loved one. They are so fraught with family ritual, the layered memories of years.

Sometimes we feel free to talk about it – indeed, there’s no way not to talk about it if the grief is fresh. 

But after some time has passed, when the grief is in the background but not really yet assimilated into our lives, it may be even harder – the dull ached of absence, and everyone trying to be cheerful.

One year – the first year we tried to go back to our usual Christmas patterns – the unspoken gloom hovered behind our attempts at joy and repartee. Suddenly, almost as though by unspoken direction, we gathered in a circle, our arms around one another, and acknowledged our grief. Then we could get on with Christmas.

In this season I will find hope, and grief as well.”

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