‘Three things’ from Ken Burns will help me navigate the holidays
Ken Burns gives advice to his children that can help anyone in distress. If you’re having trouble, he says, remember “three things”:
• This won’t last.
• Ask for help.
• Be kind to yourself.
The first statement hits me with sad irony now that Evelyn is gone. I’ll admit in the last couple of years I sometimes silently wondered, How long will this go on? Evelyn’s decline was quiet and slow, and the sameness was a slog that sometimes threatened to overwhelm me. I would have taken little comfort in those days from Burns’s first truth.
But here I am, standing away from the ordeal and deciding what to do next. I believe the weight of today’s grief won’t last, either. So I’m moving forward.
Asking for help
Meanwhile, I know I’ve done better with the last two of his truths. I have asked for help, even when I didn’t think I really needed it.
At least four different times friends came to me with suggestions for part-time caregivers, and each time my first thought was, Not now.
But I called them anyway. In each case, the help of these part-time aides became my lifesaver.
One of those four was with us for years, at home and then eventually 16 hours every week at Artis. She fed dinner and read Scripture to Evelyn the night before she died.
(She was going through the Psalms with her, and they were ready for Psalm 42. Here’s verse 2: “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” God answered that question for Evelyn just a few hours later.)
I’ve slowly learned that seeking help doesn’t make me less than the person I’m asking. It simply encourages them, by showing them they have something I need.
Often we bless by asking for a blessing.
Listening to others
Sometimes, as in the case with the caregivers I hired, someone sees something in me I couldn’t see for myself. And so I’ve tried to listen when a person I trust suggests another step I should take, another assist I should seek.
I once signed on with a BetterHelp counselor because a friend feared I was depressed.
I didn’t think I was. After my first 30-minute appointment, the counselor agreed. But I learned some things from that kind woman on the other end of two Zoom calls, and I’m grateful I wasn’t too proud to give her a try.
So when a widower friend suggested I attend a GriefShare seminar on “Surviving the Holidays,” I thought, Why not? I wasn’t dreading the holidays, but I had nothing to lose by giving a couple of hours to a group gathered simply to help each other.
I discovered there’s great therapy in hearing how someone else has experienced a loss like mine.
Anticipating the holidays
The core of the workshop was an 18-minute video available to anyone online. I’ve already recommended it to a widower friend who reached out to me when he heard of Evelyn’s passing.
But this year’s holidays aren’t the first we’ve celebrated without Evelyn. Last year, months after she had moved to Artis, was our first time she was absent from our Thanksgiving and Christmas tables.
Nevertheless, I did jot down a few suggestions from the video to follow this year—who knows?—maybe every year. Among them:
Have a plan. Huddle with other family members, acknowledging how the holidays will be different and deciding ahead of time how to handle them.
Take the pressure off yourself. It’s not necessary to eat the same meal you’ve had every Thanksgiving. You may not want the tree she always loved or the gift-giving pattern you always followed.
On the other hand, consider keeping a tradition that might be particularly nurturing.
Planning this year
Here’s what I’m planning. This is the year for both of my kids and their families to be together with me for Thanksgiving. For the first time ever we’re eating out for Thanksgiving. This may become a new tradition. (And creating new traditions is one of the video’s suggestions.)
One thing shadowing my holiday this year is my January 13 move date. Christmas was going to be different even if Evelyn hadn’t left us.
I’ve decided decorations will be sparse. I’ll have enough packing to do come January 1 without adding a day to put away all the candles and lights and greenery and tchotchkes we have always pulled out. Besides, I’m not planning on December entertaining in a house emptying of the furniture I’m giving away.
But I do plan to put up the tabletop tree with white lights and glass ornaments that has been a part of our Christmas for decades. And I’ll take Mary and Joseph and a lamb or two from the Willow Tree nativity set that was Evelyn’s favorite Christmas decoration. They’ll fit nicely under this tree on a corner table in our living room.
I plan to put it up early, so it will be there when our family gathers in November, and I’ll enjoy the lights of the tree all December. It will be enough.
My daughter has invited me to her place for Christmas—another first for me. I’m looking forward to her good cooking and all the laughter around her table with her family. I’ll relax and eat and enjoy. What could be better?
In one special holiday I’ll live out Ken Burns’s truths, being kind enough to myself to revel in help from others. And if I cry at Christmas, I feel confident those tears won’t last.