— Although a joyous time, the holiday season can be difficult for those who’ve experienced immense loss. Learn how to cope with grief and support others who are going through a challenging period.
The holidays can be notoriously challenging for anyone who has lost a loved one in their lifetime. Those who are processing grief after a close one’s death are probably dreading the holidays, as it’s usually a joyous time reserved for spending time with family members and friends. The holidays can also bring up painful feelings of longing and regret for those grieving, and witnessing other’s happiness may cause anger, resentment, sadness, and pain – as well as feelings of isolation and loneliness, especially if you typically enjoy indulging in holiday traditions. However, there are ways to cope with the holiday grief and to feel supported, uplifted, and cherished through the holiday season. Here are some low-lift ways to cope with the complex feeling of loss during the holiday season.
For those who are experiencing grief this holiday season:
Think about seeking a grief support group: Joining a support group with others who have experienced grief can be a great way to connect with others who understand what you’re going through.
Acknowledge your feelings: Sitting with your grief can be a complicated process, but it’s necessary to confront your pain with the hope of taking steps in your healing process.
Speak to a therapist: If you’re struggling to cope, talking to a professional can be very helpful.
Spend time with supportive family and friends. Surround yourself with people who will make you feel loved, supported, and not judged.
Get involved in your community: Volunteering or other activities, helping others in need, can help take your mind off your grief and make you feel good.
Keep your loved ones’ spirit alive during the holidays: Decorate in their favorite colors or decorations. You can also play their favorite holiday songs, prepare their beloved dishes, look at old photos of them, and listen to recordings.
Here’s how to interact with someone who is grieving loved ones:
Acknowledge their loss. It’s perfectly fine to say something to them about what happened. Avoid phrases like “at least,” “it was for the best,” or “they are at peace now.”
Be an active listener. Let them talk about their loved ones and their grief. Avoid giving advice or telling them how they should feel.
Sit in their grief with them: Sometimes, it’s best not to do or say anything when a person is grieving. Allow them to feel their feelings.
Don’t tell them how to feel: Try not to dictate their feelings by telling them how they should feel. Instead, offer them a safe and soft space to land.
Offer actionable help: Instead of saying, “Let me know what you need help with,” roll up your sleeves and offer practical support, like running an errand, cooking a meal, cleaning up, providing an Uber Eats gift card, or inviting them out for a drink. These small but actionable acts of service will make their lives easier, as most of their thoughts are consumed with grief and balancing their lives outside of their loss.
Be patient and understanding: Grief is a lifelong process that doesn’t magically disappear overnight, as the person in your life who is grieving needs gentleness, understanding, and grace. It’s best to extend compassion and don’t judge their behavior or how they move through the grieving process.
Grieving parents like me are told to gird themselves for anniversaries and holidays, for birthdays and religious events. We’re advised to plan for days associated with joy. We consider exit strategies. We talk about how the markers of civil religion and religious observance are harder for us, now that we no longer exist exactly inside society, but run alongside it, observing. Each holiday centered on family is now barbed.
So, all that’s to say, I have been approaching Thanksgiving this year with trepidation.
I love a holiday focused on gratitude and gathering, of food and camaraderie. I tend to cook when I’m sad or worried, and I’ve been both, a lot, of late. I bake challah and cakes and cookies. I prepare salads and mains and sides. I sauté and stir and sweat and focus. On any given Friday afternoon, my kitchen looks as though I’m expecting a crowd. But no matter how many I’ve invited, it is never the fullness of our table I see, but the absence of a place setting.
And yet, as much as holidays and calendar markers are as hard as promised, in this first half year of bereavement since our daughter Orli, 14, died from the complications of metastasized liver cancer, it is her daily absence that is the cruelest blow. It is making a pot of Orli’s favorite black beans knowing she will never sit down to eat them; it is adding back chocolate into the recipes I had removed it from, for she, unfathomably, loathed it; it is setting the table again and again for three instead of four; it is the expansiveness of the back seat of the car. It is in this quotidian drama that our family has to work to find levity as well as management, joy and, yes, exit strategies — especially as, in so many of these moments, we find ourselves alone in the noticing.
The notes and text messages slow and stop, the absence drones on. Living in loss is heavy; it is made all the more so by a world overflowing with grief, and parental pain. I see myself in all these newly minted members of my terrible club.
It’s also a remarkable amount of work, a second (or third) job. My partner, Ian, and I have sat down with groups and met with counselors. We have joined Zoom sessions, read the words of those who have come before us. Together with our surviving daughter, Hana, 10, we recently traveled to a conference at Boston Children’s Hospital to process our grief and try to face the absence at our table with other similarly reeling families.
Such experiences aren’t in search of solace or solution, but of place. It is powerful to be around people who recognize the insistency of loss, its daily presence, the continued impact of which so easily slips past others, unseen, as everyone else returns to the business of living. It has made me recognize how many people walk around concealing pain.
As a family, we have weathered a batch of life markers since Orli’s death. Hana had a birthday in June, Ian in October. We have had Passover and Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur and Sukkot, each of which was — the counselors were not wrong!— by turns meaningful and excruciating. Families arrived in synagogue, or at the holiday table, dressed and smiling, their children growing ever older, while Orli remains the age at which we parted.
Quietly, we mark our elder daughter missing, and wait on others to do the same. On Passover my father proposed adding a cup (“cos,” in Hebrew) for Orli, the way we leave a cup for Elijah, noting that absence is woven into our observance. In late summer we even, ill advisedly, attended a wedding. It was too soon. We were not ready to be surrounded by unadulterated joy; we did not know how to hold ourselves, and our pain, without dulling the bride and groom’s shine. We fled during cocktail hour.
But I have also found I relish the occasional dark humor of other parents who have lost children, who recognize the macabre place we all live, how comically awful it is to run into people who still don’t know. “How’s the family?” a writer I ran into asked me the other day. I wanted to say, “So Hana started volleyball, and, well, Orli’s dead.” Orli would have laughed. Instead I changed the subject.
I’ve been in awe of the strength and cheek of Hana, who decided to pen a letter to the writers of a children’s television program to tell them what real drama looks like (her sister’s seizure! Her miserable, hospitalized 14th birthday! The morning of her sister’s death, when she said a final goodbye); of Ian, who gets up daily and throws himself into parenting as though the world hadn’t ended in March.
This first Thanksgiving without Orli will also be the first time a group of friends and family that had traditionally gathered this time of year will be together since before Covid and cancer. The last time we assembled for the holiday the children ran freely in the hallways of our friends’ apartment building, careening along beige walls and dragging their sticky hands, making a hilariously loud ruckus near the elevators. I can see Orli, her hair still long, untouched by the ravages of cancer treatment, by turns serious and silly, chasing her sister and cousins, healthy, red-cheeked, unaware of what was to come. I have a photo of her there as a toddler, in a dress from my childhood, a red-checkered pinafore, years away from the abyss.
I already long had a mixed relationship with Thanksgiving, partly because it always lands on or around my birthday. I loathed, as a child, that friends would be away, that school cupcakes almost never arrived on the actual day. As an adult the holiday neutralized — even, briefly, got happier.
Then Orli had her first biopsy on my birthday, a few days before Thanksgiving, in 2019. My relationship to the holiday tilted once more. As we waited in pre-op, she worried she had ruined my birthday; I promised her there was no place I’d rather be. That first cancer Thanksgiving Orli was in terrible pain, pale and wan and yet, unbelievably, smiling in the few photos I took that week. Chemotherapy had not yet begun; her diagnosis, let alone prognosis, was still elusive.
We rushed to assemble a home-based holiday with as much cheer as we could muster. She told us she felt like she was in a movie; we wished it were so. One night, as she lay in the bath, she implored me not to cry in front of her; it scared her. So I didn’t. Instead we watched “The Greatest Showman” on repeat, and sang and cooked for many more people than we had on hand. For all the Thanksgivings that came after, I drew courage just being together.
We have tried to keep Orli with us, even as we feel ourselves slipping further away. These days I look for traces in how she approached holidays, and every day. I find myself seeking comfort in Orli’s journal notes of how proud she was of Hana for creating Ian’s birthday party one year ago (a Formula One theme), and her joy last holiday season in receiving tickets to “Wicked.” I love to hear the way Orli stories reach people, and receiving notes from her peers who let me in on things I might not have known: her favorite flower, a moment in which she extended a kindness, or was bolder than they felt they could be. I love hearing that her face is still on someone’s home screen, or that a friend took her with them, in spirit, to a concert she would have loved. Not long after she died I stumbled across a note she’d tucked into my desk drawer, written on a handmade cut-out heart, that said, “I love you Ima, no matter what.” It sits now in a lucite frame, next to me. I see her beloved foxes everywhere.
It is these chispas (“sparks” in English), as you might say in Spanish, that let me face each small daily indignity of grief: when I am asked at a restaurant “How many will you be?” and I find myself searching for the right number, when I feel my heart seize each time I see siblings together and watch Hana watching them, when I hear the opening beats of “Anti-Hero” and think of Orli, asking for Taylor Swift, in yet another operating room.
We are fundamentally rewired as a family, as humans. We face the world differently, holding loss, in both rage and sadness. This holiday season, this year, countless others have joined us in this awful place. In this time of mass bereavement, as so many will be wondering how to set their tables, or if they will even be able to gather at all, I keep wondering if the key to seeing each other’s humanity is in somehow recognizing how universal the terrible ongoing nature of loss is, how human it makes us, how frail, how essential each day is, when none of us has any idea about the next.
I wonder how we might all move forward, not just as each holiday comes, but as each day passes, not better, but altered. Meanwhile, the gratitude I’ll have this Thanksgiving will still come: from having had the chance to know this love, even in its pain.
— Since my sister’s passing in June, I’m dreading Thanksgiving and other seasonal family events without her. But there are ways to handle the loss and the festivities.
My sister died in June. That awful day was the beginning of my “first (fill in the blank) without Julie” dates. They kept coming: My first birthday. The first summer vacation. The first change of season. Now comes the onslaught of the first holiday season.
My therapist, and friends who have suffered losses, have warned me that “the ‘firsts’ are always the worst” — so I am dreading the upcoming holiday season.
Our bonds and rituals with our loved ones are deeply encoded in our brains, she says. For instance, we expect a spouse to come home after work at 5 p.m. or a child to awake up excitedly on Christmas morning.
When they don’t, when expectation hits the harsh reality of the new situation, “we experience grief, pain and suffering because they were so important, and we can’t function in the world in the same way,” she says.
As a result, O’Connor says, “your internal map of the world no longer matches up with the world itself,” which is why we need to created a revised cartography of our new lives.
“Suddenly, every plan that is in place has a hole in it where that person should be,” O’Connor says. “The first time, that hole is most apparent because you have no other way of understanding [for example] what a holiday looks like” without that person in it.
Our family was lucky — if it can be called that — because we were prepared.
Julie’s death was not sudden, as she had lived with ovarian cancer for 5½ years. Last Thanksgiving, which we feared would be her last, our entire family — spouses, nieces, boyfriends and girlfriends, as well as chosen family — gathered to be together with her. We leaned into every tradition. My pecan pie. My niece’s cheese board. While Julie, our family’s top chef, prepped and whipped, sliced and diced the turkey and its fixings. In our photos from last year, she’s right there in the middle; ditto in my memories.
A month after Julie died, her wife suggested that we carry on this year with our holiday traditions to provide continuity. Sticking with tradition can be a comforting way to approach the first holidays.
Brad Milne, co-founder and chief operating officer of Better Place Forests (which provides grieving families the opportunity to spread their loved ones’ ashes at the base of a tree in a protected forest) wrote in a blog post, “It can help you feel closer to your lost loved one by reminding you of happy holidays spent together …. People coming together to support one another often creates a comforting sense of solidarity.”
It’s not the only way and, frankly, I’m ambivalent about it. Yes, I want to be with my family, but I worry — no, I know — that we can’t replicate the past and that it will be painful.
That’s why others decide to change their long-held traditions in the first year — and sometimes much longer — after a loss. A complete change of scene, a break from tradition, can provide a different kind of comfort.
After Ed Chaney and Mandy Hitchcock lost their 17-month-old daughter, Hudson, in May 2010, they decided to leave the country altogether for that first Christmas without her. So they headed to Paris. Thinking of the popular saying “Wherever you go, there you are,” I asked Chaney whether they hadn’t just brought their sadness with them. No, he said, “we didn’t leave the country to escape the grief, just to grieve on our own terms,” without having to worry about the reaction or emotionalism of others.
Many of those I interviewed felt silenced by relatives at holiday celebrations and discouraged from bringing up their pain. O’Connor says it’s important to remember that each person in the family grieves differently and needs different things. “There are some who still really need to avoid conversations about it and there are others who need to memorialize and express how they’re feeling, ” she says.
Kate Kennedy, an educator, whose parents died in a car wreck when she was 27, told me, “I wish I had been allowed to talk about how worried I was that grief would bury me on a holiday. The not being able to say it out loud was hard.”
I worry about that, too. If everyone seems happy, will I bring down the room?
Preferring not to celebrate is normal, writes Milne, but he cautions against being alone as the alternative: “Having people around you for support is important when you’re grieving.” Over and over, I heard “Don’t be alone” and “Don’t isolate” from those I interviewed. It’s important if you can arrange it to be with people who understand what you’re going through.
Looking for advice on how to make it through the year-end dark days, I discovered the Happily Ever Adventures blog, where Lena Ameripour described how she survived her first holidays after her mother died of ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease. “I didn’t know how we were supposed to be happy without her,” she wrote. She and others provided several suggestions about how to survive the “firsts,” which I intend to rely on:
Do something in memory of your loved one. I’m going to ask my family to go on a walk after our big meal, something we usually did together when Julie was alive.
If there were games that brought joy before, play them again — or try new ones. We love jigsaw puzzles and Rummikub, No need to change that except to introduce Qwirkle, a board game involving tiles that I think will suit our competitive spirit.
Buy a gift in honor of your deceased loved one and donate it to a hospital or a favorite nonprofit group. I’m going to send an amaryllis, my sister’s favorite flower, to her oncologist and others who helped care for her.
Watch a favorite movie together. Our family used to binge on the Hallmark Channel’s schmaltzy holiday movies, which, as Julie always said, deliver “a happy ending every 90 minutes.”
Tell others what you need. No one is a mind reader, not even loved ones or family members. Do you need a break? Or a hug? A good cry? As I joke with my dog, “Use your words!”
Find some joy. Even when grieving, there’s joy — in the foods we’ll eat, in the hugs we’ll give and get. Even in our memories. Yes, we can hold more than one emotion at a time.
I’m also planning to tell Julie stories of holiday seasons past. Ellen Steinberg, a graphic designer whose father died 14 years ago, told me, “talking about the deceased diffuses the pressure cooker of sadness that comes from people trying to hold it together and rise above the abyss the missing person has left behind. Talk about them. Share a story. Soon you’ll be laughing about a wonderful memory and quite literally bringing their spirit into the room.”
O’Connor also reminded me “to remember that grief comes in waves. There will be many different moments, and each of those moments will require your big tool kit of coping strategies, a different tool for every situation.”
She also notes that it’s normal for these waves to come and then recede, and knowing that may help us not to fear them quite so much and may even help in the midst of grief.<
“I am sorry for your pain,” a friend wrote me recently. “It will most likely always be there but hopefully, it will lessen as you find your own way of facing it. Wishing you peace throughout this first year without your beloved sister.”
I wish the same to all of you facing the holidays for the first time without your loved one.
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My mother died from ovarian cancer when I was a young child.
I’m in my late 30s now, and I’m still navigating this loss as I move through life. I’ve lived most of my life without my mother at this point, but I still miss her.
Here are three things I’ve learned since losing Mam:
1. Grief is not linear and is not solely expressed through tears.
Someone you love has been taken away from you, and your heart has broken into pieces. It’s natural to grieve, but we all grieve differently. Grief shows up in anger, sorrow, guilt, fear, and sometimes peace. It is unpredictable and, at times, exhausting.
I cried when my mother died, and I cried at her funeral when my school choir sang “Be Not Afraid.” I didn’t cry much in the immediate years that followed — not directly as a result of Mam’s death, but probably indirectly related to it. I certainly felt fear and anger and other emotions related directly to my loss.
Then sadness hit me like a ton of bricks one day when I was in my early 20s. A compassionate friend asked me about Mam, and as I hadn’t spoken about her to anyone outside the family, I broke down. It was a good release. The years have brought many stages of grieving.
Mother’s Day is never easy. Shopping for my wedding dress without my mother brought up intense feelings of loss. And sometimes it just hits me hard, on a regular day, yanking me out of my pleasant thoughts. A mother in a dressing room with her daughter, and they’re trying on clothes together, admiring how the other looks. The mother telling the daughter how beautiful she is.
Or a friend of mine, meeting her mother for lunch and Ican’t even imagine what that would be like! I can’t even fathom the amazing joy of having lunch right now with Mam! And then I get that heaviness in my chest and my stomach feels bad.
There’s no closure. My grieving stems from having loved so deeply. I have learned to tune into the emotions I’m feeling and to acknowledge the love, the pain, and the loss.
2. There are no replacements.
Nobody can replace your mother. We love our mothers in our own individual ways. Our mothers care for us when we’re sick, guide us in life the best ways they can, listen to us, and love us unconditionally.
For a mother, her child is always her first priority. And we sense this. We feel it. We know it, even if she doesn’t say it.
I was told that she called me her little angel.
My mother was beyond happy when I was born a healthy baby girl. I was told that she called me her little angel. She carried me in her womb for nine months.
By the time I was born, we had that unbreakable bond, and she knew me from that first second of my existence. There’s never going to be a replacement for that person who loved me probably more than she loved herself. The joy in her eyes when she saw me, the warmth of her arms wrapped around me, the pain in her eyes when she had to say goodbye are all ways that I remember the deep love she had for me.
Mam prepared lunches for me every day to take to school, named muffins after me because they were my favorite, and surprised me with the best doll she could find when I was a few years old. She repaired my soft toys when they tore, taught me to have manners and sit up straight, wiped my eyes when I cried and my nose when I was sick.
Today I look for certain qualities in people. I look for a warmth, a radiance, a compassion and kindness that Mam had. I look for humor, a voice of sense, and strength of character. These are traits that my mother had. I find some of them in others.
But it’s never the same. There’ll never be another Mam. She’s irreplaceable on so many levels.
3. There are other people who will love you and other people for you to love.
Family members and friends will love you. They might not know exactly what your needs are or how to address them, but it’s worth reaching out to them. People struggle with different things.
Perhaps family members cannot love you or be there for you, and we may have to look around, let go, and reach further than we might want to in order to find the people who really love us, but there is someone out there to love you, and there’s someone in need of your love.
I was blessed with the kindest, most devoted father who gave my brother and me all the love and care we needed. My dad is a gem in my life. He calls me to hear my news and to share his. He worries when I’m not feeling good and is overjoyed when I’m happiest. He listens to my concerns and trusts me to make the right decisions.
My dad has helped me so much in dealing with my loss, through caring for me and loving me unconditionally. I have the most wonderful fiancé who loves me to no end. And I’ve friends in my life who I know truly care about me.
I’ve been blessed with a lovely family, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t reach out to others. I’ve reconnected with old friends after years of distance. I’ve discovered things I have in common with others and opened up to new friendships.
Having people to love is truly healing. I was a kindergarten teacher for 10 years. I loved the children in my care, and they showed me so much love in return. By spreading love, we invite more love into our lives. Try volunteering or working in a school or a hospital. There are people everywhere in need of love.
Our world is so big and yet so small now in this age of technology. We can reach out to others across continents.
Our mothers were the first to show us the true meaning of love. In honor of our mothers, let’s spread that love wherever we can.
When we know something is going to happen, we try to prepare ourselves. If the timer is about to go off, we grab the oven mitts lest we burn the chocolate chip cookies. When there’s a new baby expected in the family, we rush to check our phones each time they ring. If we’ve somehow found ourselves in the front row of a roller coaster, we silently curse the friends who talked us into it and grip the bar before that big drop at the beginning. When we find out someone we care about is sick and likely to die soon, we grieve even before they are dead.
Anticipatory grief is the period of time prior to an expected death (or other loss.) It is filled with many emotions and can easily be written off as “just stress” but it should be seen as its own unique grief experience. It provides an opportunity for you to make plans of how to care for the person, to have conversations you’ve been putting off and spend meaningful time with the person who is dying. At its core, anticipatory grief allows you a chance to imagine a world without the person who is going to die; a terrifically sad prospect. Not each death allows for the experience of anticipatory grief but if you do experience it, Hospice of St. Lawrence Valley offers the following suggestions:
Consider secondary losses. Not only are you grieving the loss of a person but you’re grieving what will (or won’t) happen because of their death. Things like a change in financial security or in living arrangements. When the person dies your role in the family, and perhaps even your purpose, may change. You will also be grieving the future you thought you’d have with them. They won’t be at that wedding, graduation or next big family get together.
Remember your whole body will grieve. Just like with traditional grief (after the person dies), anticipatory grief impacts your whole body not just your emotions. People frequently experience headaches, changes in eating habits, and feeling as though they’re always on the verge of tears. For me it was the sensation of holding my breath, for months, while the person I loved was on Hospice.
Your emotions will be conflicting. Anticipatory grief can be confusing. On one hand you are sad this person will die, on the other you want to focus on the good memories you have and can still make with them. At times you may feel grieving or imagining a world without the person who is dying is “giving up.” It’s not, it’s a natural part of the grieving process. It is important to note going through anticipatory grief does not give you a head start on the traditional grieving process after a death.
Anticipatory grief can be overwhelming. No matter how long the person was sick, no matter how long it’s been since they were “themselves” you will still grieve their physical absence.
— My friends came to a silent supper with their dead friends and relatives so that we could grieve our loved ones together
‘It’s only minutes into the evening when it becomes painfully, joyfully clear that everyone around the table needs this communion’: India Rakusen at her silent supper.
I don’t normally feel worried about having my friends over for dinner. Usually, I’ll be covered in splashes of soup and partially dressed when they arrive, but tonight I feel nervous.
Figuring out who to invite was complicated. Not only did they have to be available at short notice, but they had to be up for it, open to something different. Because this evening everyone has been asked to bring a plus-one … someone who has died.
As my living guests begin to arrive, bringing in the dark and subtle nip of the October air, I have the strong sense that they are not alone. I take their coats and ask them for the photo of their guest. Out of their pockets come snapshots. Smiling portraits, a moment of laughter on the stairs, a child on the beach, the ruffled ears of a French bulldog, a matriarch blurred by clouds of cigarette smoke.
In the other room, it’s quiet. The table is laid with candles, autumn leaves from the park and bright flowers, and there are twice as many plates laid at the table as there will be people in the room. I put each photo in its place. Because this is where we will serve food to the dead. We will eat, sometimes in silence, but we’ll talk and remember and, probably, cry. This is a silent supper. A feast for the dead.
It isn’t something I’d even have thought to do if I hadn’t been hanging out with witches for the series Witch for BBC Sounds and Radio 4. I’ve rarely felt comfortable or at ease talking about the dead or talking to someone who’s grieving, but for witches this seems to be different. Over the past year I’ve taken part in seances, been to an ancestor ritual and made an ancestor bottle for the spirit of a loved one. Most witches have regular rituals and altars for their ancestors and, of course, they have a dedicated season for remembrance. Witches believe that on 31 October, or Samhain, the “veil” is thin. It’s a skin between life and death that becomes more porous throughout October until, on this night, life and death can pour into each other – a lot like the world we see around us.
There are twice as many plates at the table as people in the room
This is the idea we play with at Halloween when ghouls and night terrors come knocking at our door. There’s a playfulness and joy at the idea of the afterlife being present, but in reality it’s so far out of reach. This year, I’ve decided to search for meaningful ways to remember the dead.
I decided that hosting a silent supper – historically known as a “dumb supper” – could be a good start. Eating in silence and feasting for the dead has been part of life for centuries. In England, there used to be a tradition called “chesting”.
Prof Diane Purkiss, author of English Food: A People’s History, explains: “This was even more of an Irish wake than an Irish wake. It involved having a feast that was laid out on the coffin of the deceased person. A massive blowout meal with huge treats and sugary goo. It’s honouring the dead, but it’s also quite visceral because you’re doing it on the coffin and it almost brings them physically into the feast.”
A silent supper is one step further. “What you’re describing is a ritual around the scariest and most taboo thing, which is the dead,” she says, “and this is because witches have a very special relationship with them. I define a witch as someone who doesn’t see the dead the way other people do.”
That’s certainly true. Last year my friend, colleague and witch Tatum Swithenbank reached the age at which a much loved and needed auntie had died. So their coven held a silent supper. “Sometimes we just want a space to talk about the people who have passed and there’s not really any great comfort you can give in words,” they told me. “What’s better than listening in a neutral space? That was the power of it. I don’t think you have to be a witch or be practising to do that.” They ate cheese, skull-shaped pizzas and a pumpkin pie.
Feeling underqualified to host my own silent supper, I ask for advice. “Making it dark, with only candles, really helps because people feel they are not as exposed,” says Tatum. “And it’s important to say something at the beginning. I acknowledged that grief is messy and complicated.” Another witch who loves a silent supper is Emma Griffin, who shares the ritual with her children. “It’s really nice for them to know their heritage,” she says. “We’ll have supper and talk about death, look through photos and also talk about death bringing changes. This year we are making food that my dad would like – meat and potato pie, mash and gravy.”
She advises me to make the space sacred and gentle. “I suggest giving people a dress code. When they come over your threshold, give them a little tealight. Remember, it’s a celebration of life. And you want to burn myrrh,” she says, gently but firmly as she talks me through my first ever online myrrh purchase. “It will smoke a lot, so don’t panic.”
The most pressing question of all is what on earth am I going to feed the dead? “Traditionally, the dead seem to want luxury foods,” says Purkiss. “They tend to eat dessert first, you know, life is short, eat dessert first. The dead always feel undervalued and in a way it makes them shirty so you are trying to get them to a position where they feel you value them.”
So, before the event, I threw myself (and my partner) into planning a six-course feast, my guests constantly in mind, especially the dead ones. What would they want? What would we give them if we had the chance again?
I bring Grandma Suzette. The family rarely talks about her
Purkiss approves. “Isn’t that what we all want?” she says. “When someone dies, virtually the first thing you feel is, ‘Oh, if only. If only I’d done this, or if only I’d found the time’. And the whole point of the ceremony is to give yourselves the healing chance to show great aunt Sarah you did really care.”
On the night itself, I choose to bring Grandma Suzette, who I have never met. She died when my dad was a baby. The family rarely talk about her. As my own son turned one, the loss of her for my dad and his siblings, and for me, started to ring loudly in my body. I am desperate to grieve for her.
And that’s what we’re here to do tonight. There’s a lot of normal party noise in the kitchen, but when we enter the dining room, absolutely brimming with myrrh smoke, everything softens. First, we light a candle and welcome our dead guests to the table. It feels a little strange, but maybe it should be normal. After all, eating for – and even with the dead – was once a living tradition, one that’s been purposefully rubbed away.
“There was this way of seeing the dead as beings that you interact with,” says Purkiss, adding that Catholic death rituals, such as kissing ornately decorated bones of saints, or praying in huge ossuaries stacked with bodies, went out during the Reformation. “Protestants threw all of that out, partly because they thought it had become a bit of a scam and it probably had in some cases. But the phrase throwing out the baby with the bathwater comes powerfully to mind.”
And she might be right, because it’s only minutes into the evening when it becomes painfully, joyfully clear that everyone around the table needs this communion with the dead. The phrase “I haven’t allowed myself to grieve” comes up time and again. One friend hasn’t allowed herself to grieve for her mum for 11 years. Another drifted from someone she adored and never felt she had permission to mourn them. A pal describes her love and grief for her dog Buddy as tied up with her longing for a baby. We also share joy and memories. My sister brings my other hilarious, powerful granny. A friend shares the story of a grandad who brought him pure and uncomplicated joy.<
The talking is a release, but so is acknowledging the empty places. “People did that a lot after the First World War,” Purkiss says. “They would lay places at Christmas dinner for people who had died. It makes sense.” There are three mini courses that we eat without speaking. We reflect or we write, and then we burn things we wished we could say to them.
As the courses continue to roll out, my guests talk about how much their plus-ones would have loved the feast, the wine. The chance to eat dessert again and again. We make them feel loved through food. Buddy the dog would have had a field day.
We eat too much, raise glasses of sweet mead to everyone, say the names of people out loud many, many times. We look each other straight in the eyes. No one shies away from death. By the end we all stink of myrrh, but it is as though something had shifted, for all of us. For me, I know how to talk about my grandma now, and I cannot wait to keep celebrating the people I miss in my life.
Grief is an inevitable part of life and an emotion that can be quite overwhelming to experience. It can be brought on by many things, from losing a loved one to being diagnosed with a serious medical condition or even a job loss. When someone is grieving, there are a lot of emotional and mental symptoms that are often discussed- things like sadness, depression, and anxiety.
However, what is not often talked about are the many physical symptoms that can manifest when someone is grieving. Some of these symptoms can be alarming, while others can be subtle. In this article, we’ll discuss ten physical symptoms you may be feeling and didn’t know was grief.
Fatigue
One of the most common physical symptoms of grief is fatigue. Grief can take an enormous toll on your body and mind and often leave you feeling mentally and physically drained. Though it may be difficult, it’s essential that those who are grieving make an effort to rest as much as possible.
Insomnia
When someone is grieving, they may find it challenging to get quality sleep. While they may feel tired all the time, getting a full night’s sleep is something they will struggle with. Worry, anxiety, and stress may keep them up at night, leading to further exhaustion, which can make it difficult to maintain a healthy sleep schedule. If you’re struggling with insomnia, it may be helpful to try some relaxation techniques like meditation or yoga in the evening to help you relax your mind before bed. All-natural melatonin may also help you get to sleep.
Change in Appetite
It is common to experience appetite changes while grieving. Some individuals overeat, while others may find they have little to no appetite at all. If the latter is true, try to take a one-a-day multivitamin to ensure your body is getting some minerals. Try to eat a balanced diet, if you can. For those who tend to be emotional eaters, keeping your kitchen stocked with healthy food is ideal.
Physical Aches and Pains
Grief can cause unexplained aches and pains, including headaches, stomach pains, and muscle tension. These may come and go and can spread through the body. It’s important to make sure you take breaks throughout the day, drink water, and stretch to help alleviate these physical symptoms. Yoga can be effective in reducing muscle tension. You may also opt to book a relaxing massage.
Weakened Immune System
Studies have shown that prolonged grief can weaken the immune system, causing an increased risk of illnesses and infections. It’s important to eat well, exercise, and take care of yourself to avoid further illness during this time. Speak to your doctor or health care provider if you are coming down with infections and illnesses more often.
Digestive Issues
Grief can bring on stomach pain, nausea, and digestive issues. While these symptoms can be uncomfortable, they’re typically temporary and short-lived. However, if they persist, it may be helpful to seek advice from a medical professional. Drinking herbal tea and plenty of water throughout the day may help relieve some of these issues. Also, watch what you eat. If you are an emotional eater, try to reduce your junk food intake and increase your fruit, veggies, and healthy foods.
Breathing Difficulties
For some individuals, grieving may make breathing more challenging. This can manifest as shortness of breath or shallow breathing. It’s important to take steps to regulate your breathing through relaxation techniques like deep breathing, meditation, or gentle exercise.
High Blood Pressure
Prolonged grief can lead to hypertension, also known as high blood pressure. It’s essential to remain mindful of your diet and exercise, as well as thinking positive thoughts to reduce stress and your risk of developing high blood pressure. Practicing mindfulness may help ease your anxiety and grief, even just a little.
Chest Pain
Many people who are grieving often complain of having chest pain. This may be due to muscle tension, shortness of breath, or a feeling of ‘heaviness’ in the chest. If you experience chest pain, it’s important to seek medical attention immediately to rule out any other underlying causes.
Skin Irritations
Rash and hives are also physical symptoms of grief. Stress can cause skin irritations, so it is essential to take care of your skin health at this time. If you notice a rash forming, apply some natural antiseptic such as aloe vera gel or even a mixture of coconut oil and tea tree oil.
Conclusion
Grief is a natural process, but it can bring along with it several uncomfortable physical symptoms. While it’s important to try to manage your symptoms, it’s also essential to remember that everyone’s grieving process is different, and there is no ‘right’ way to grieve.
If you’re struggling with physical symptoms of grief, don’t hesitate to reach out, talk to someone, and seek medical aid if necessary. Remember that it takes time to heal and recover and that with patience and self-care, you can find inner peace and solace.
