Loss in a Time of Joy

Church Candles on Christmas Eve

I had a secret over the holidays.

I was in mourning over Christmas and I didn’t want my children to know.

While my husband and I took our children to attend a Nativity celebration on Christmas Eve in Germany, my brother and sister were taking care of other obligations in Canada.

The email to summon us had landed in my email box the day before. It put me in shock, but there was no way for me to respond except to pass along the information. My siblings and I have always been close. Being separated from them is often difficult, but this was the hardest time of all.

A relative from whom we’d been long estranged was dying. For almost twenty-five years the three of us have known the call to the deathbed would come. I never imagined that I would be so far away. I never imagined that the visit would unfold on Christmas Eve.

While my brother and sister attended the bedside for a brief visit, I was with my children who were full of joy appropriate for the night before Christmas. They lit votive candles and sang with me:

Oh Lord our God
Thine children call
Grant us thine peace
and bless us all

It made me want to sob, but I couldn’t.

I took three candles, for the three players in a family drama, and stole a quiet moment alone to send prayers for peace and love that were different than the ones I have made on other Christmases. Maybe there was something desperate to my prayers that clung to the emergence of light and hope was everywhere on Christmas Eve. Maybe the ambiance of joy and anticipation made it easier to accept that I would play no role in the resolution of our own family conflict. It was easy to believe amid the candlelight and carolsong, the souls I was praying for would not be infected by uncertainty and the unresolved, but by the joy and promise of the everlasting.

Earlier that day, I’d read an article about another person’s experience of resolution unachieved and although the circumstances of the author and his relationship were very different from my own, it comforted me with a framework for dealing with the loss of life combined with loss of potential.

There were many fitting gifts of perspective.

The next day, while the world celebrated the birth of a King, news came that another life had ended. I lit another candle. I said another prayer. And the light filled the dark room. You have to let it. No matter what time of year it happens.

Submitted by Anonymous

Tags: grief, loss, death, death of a loved one at Christmas, coping