Bereavement near Christmas

[mids2019]

Has anyone had experience of deaths of relatively elderly family members near Christmas? It look like the period for giving condolences will pretty much coincide with traditional festive gatherings so I guess the question is have people continued to meet up in a festive present giving partying type of way or have they fundamentally changed their Christmas traditions?

Personally feel a bit of cognitive dissonance is needed to combine condolence/memorial type conversations with a festive atmosphere. We have young children so I think there is a bit of added pressure to keep Christmas fun.

We’ve had a few in our family. We’ve carried on with the usual Christmas Day, but it’s been more subdued than normal, as has the run up to Christmas.

We’ve appreciated the time together and the chance to talk about the people who have passed.

It does hang over subsequent Christmases, but that’s inevitable. We just fondly remember those who have passed, and I think it’s benefitted us to have family around at this difficult time of year.

@EVHead .

Seems good advice. I think a lot of the Christmas activities will effectively be wakes to some extent. The floods of Christmas cards and general assumed mollify of Christmas is a bit jarring.

I suppose it depends if family is more reflective or more the sort of well 'x wouldn't want Christmas to be spoiled' types. It's a bad time of year as Christmas has a momentum of its own if you are what I mean?

I would advise you to do whatever you need to, to get through it. If that means cancelling plans to socialise, people will understand. Grief is tough and you don’t want to make it any tougher ❤️

I’m sorry for your loss x

Yes we had Christmas as normal one week after the death but the adults were all feeling quite subdued.

We kept the fun up for the children, though. Obviously we talked about how sad it was Grandpa wasn't there but we tried our hardest to make it fun for the children as life has to and should go on.

My father died at Christmas and his funeral was on the 21st December. It was an incredibly strange time. Christmas flowers in the church and Christmas lights everywhere and we had his gifts all wrapped and ready to give.
We had small children so we had to keep going.
On Christmas day we all stayed together and tried to do a ' normal' Christmas day but we took it in turns practically to go in the garden and cry!
The post would arrive and you didn't know if you were opening a Christmas card with his name on or a sympathy card.

For quite a few years after I found Christmas very difficult and would get quite depressed but I am over that now. I muss him of course and think fondly of him at Christmas but it is definitely easier.

Sorry to hear of all your losses.

Interesting point about keeping going for the children. Does this actually work or do Shostakovich up on the grief and it leads to confusion. It feels like at times someone should make a decision to "cancel Christmas' but in reality this won't happen. It's all very strange

Mum died at the beginning of December 2021. Completely out of the blue, aged 66. Her funeral was day before New Year’s Day.

I didn’t go to my works Christmas party. I cancelled things I was doing. Things for the kids carried on. Taking the kids was hard, but I am a single parent. People who knew were very kind. They may not mention it out right, when I arrived with the kids. But they would hug me and look right at me and ask how I was and could they do anything. Obviously the answer was no. But it was nice to be asked.

I finished the Christmas list mum had wrote out for the grandkids. We still did Christmas dinner at my dad’s, opened the presents, tried to make the day as good as we could for the kids. A lot of it was auto pilot. At one point my adult dd, set fire to the Christmas puddings. Dad put it out and me and dd ended up crying with our arms wrapped around each other in the back garden. Which then turned into laughter. Mum hated anyone taking her oven. Now we could see why. The day was very up and down.

I still visited family as planned. I saw more of close family, trying to organise things. Where I would pop in for a catch up it was talking about what happened, did what know what caused it, memories of them, talk of the shock we all felt. It felt nice to be around family.

Everything felt odd. A sense of normality as the world carried on, as I took the kids to things, but with this filter of grief and shock over it.

This is the third Christmas. It’s not quite the same as it was before. A sense of sadness still sits over December. Everything we do, makes me feel sad that’s she is missing it.

I have no idea if I did things the right way or the expected way. Or even in the best way for me and the kids. But I do know that we got through it.

apologises if non of that helps you.

@Ffsnotaconference

thank you for your poignant post.

I think the idea of Christmas being an emotional roller coaster is really going to hit and I suppose it is the risk that emotions will take over at some point that we have to consider. I think an option is 'Christmas simply is not going to work and feels inappropriate ' but as I said earlier is this feasible?

fear for me is everyone putting on a false jovial front and it all cracking or just defending into apathy.

The first couple of Christmas’ were very hard work, but it was his birthday on the 19 December, so we now celebrate that day, get together, eat food he’d have loved and kind of devote that day to his memory.

Then when Christmas comes, we get on an ‘do’ Christmas … he’s always in our hearts though…

Whether that’s feasible or not. Is entirely situation dependent.

My Nana does when I was 19. Christmas was cancelled as some sort of tribute to her. She didn’t die near Christmas but they cancelled it anyway. My mum and her sisters really fell apart for many years. I was older and had been seeing the man I would marry (now divorced) so went there.

But, cancelling Christmas, really impacted the kids in the family. They are all in their 30s now and still mention it. The fact that their friends had a proper christmas and they didn’t, was strange to them. They got presents, but no Christmas lunch no family gathering like there was before. One cousin said how she still remembers the day was quite scary. Like it was physical proof of how life will never be the same. Like Christmas had died with her Nana. Like being happy or excited was disrespectful. They missed a lot that year. While it’s only one year, it’s not something they forgot. And as we have become adults and lost people cancelling Christmas is not something we would do. In fact when my grandad died later, it’s not something my mum and aunts chose to do that first Christmas. They had grandchildren by that point.

I can’t say my mum, her sisters and their dad grieved wrong. But it took maybe about 10 years for the fallout from Nanas death to feel anywhere near normal. Mum and all her sisters ended up heavily medicated for years after.

I would say if you have kids and effort to have Christmas. If you feel over whelmed take 5 mins. My ds is now 13, he was glad of the normality. We still did Christmas, he obviously sad. But having Christmas gave him some normality, especially when he returned to school and caught up with his friends.

I definitely found it up and down. I cried but I also laughed. Even on Christmas Day, even missing my mum more than I could imagined. I am glad we did it. It made the Christmas the next year a bit better too.

This is only my point of view though.

We were possibly more subdued and a bit shocked but the deceased loved Christmas and was a bit kid a heart. The last thing they'd have wanted is for everyone to stay at home and to stop the kids fun. It was a bit weird but I guess it helped get the first Christmas over and done with.

I don't see the point of cancelling Christmas. Who'd really want their kids or grandkids not to gather and have fun because they are dead?

My ex mother in law died unexpectedly on Christmas eve morning, she died in my ex-h's arms. That affected him for years, understandably.
His sister had a young child of 2 at the time so as far as possible for him, they did the usual- stockings, presents etc but for the rest of the family it was a completely numb time. I can't even remember who cooked dinner or what we had.
Every year, even though we're divorced I always think of her on Christmas eve.
My fil died a few years ago on Boxing day. We were told Christmas day that he'd not got long so we left where we were and went to his nursing home with mil. We were with family and grandchildren when we got the call, we told the adults but just told the kiddies we had to leave now, they didn't need to know.

My dad died in late November. Not unexpected, but he was only 60. I didn’t feel like doing much for myself, but we kept Christmas going for the children.

my grandmother died (his mum) a few years later at the age of 93, she really wanted to go, could no longer see or hear well. We carried on as normal that year, with a special toast to her.

I think it's unhealthy to 'carry on' for the kids, very confusing for them.

I'd tone it down and keep the fundamentals, but model self-care as that is long term more beneficial for them.

This will be the first Xmas since DM died and it feels like the end of an era as both DPs have gone now. Widowed DM hugely enjoyed the bustle of Xmas and loved helping with cooking/entertaining all the DGCs. I've hosted the wider family for the past 20 years, but have not extended an invite to my siblings and their families this year. It feels like the glue that held us together has gone, and their behaviour since DMs death has made me reevaluate my relationships with my siblings. My own small family will be celebrating together and will raise a glass to DPs in amongst our bustle and create some new happier memories 💕

OP, Is the loss your family member or is it your partners family? I just say this because I think if it's the latter you have to be really strong and help to hold everything together and expect the unexpected with emotions

A number of years ago we had our DDs funeral on 21st December. We got to 22nd December and sat there and said "what do we do now ". The previous 2 weeks had been a blur and it suddenly hit us that everyone else would be celebrating Christmas whether we did or not. Grief is a strange thing but we made the decision to get the Christmas tree out of the loft, pop out and buy some Christmas Dinner and have a very subdued Christmas day but nevertheless a proper meal (probably the first one for a while). We didn't do our usual family visits though - we'd just seen everyone at the funeral. And our Christmas day walk incorporated a visit to DDs grave - as it has done every year since.

It's such an individual thing, for many people it's actually important to carry on with Christmas, albeit in a more muted fashion, because that's what the person who died would have wanted. My grandmother held on until the beginning of January but we did have Christmas with her sat in the arm chair not eating drifting in and out of consciousness by that point, she loved Christmas so much it felt odd to be pulling crackers but also was right, put a hat on her head etc. you have that sense of foreboding though, conversations in hushed tones.

@ohtowinthelottery

So sorry to hear that piece of family history.

I can see Christmas being subdued would be natural but it does seem the whole ethos of the festival is merriment and good cheer.

A very thoughtful post above about how just not bothering with Christmas can effect children and that is definitely a consideration

However I don't feel a 'full on Christmas' is going to happen either.....strange times.

My father died on 1 December four years ago. TBH, apart from cancelling things where we had to be somewhere else, like the funeral, or helping my mother, we very much tried to see our friends and keep our spirits up. People are generally very kind and will do what they can to support you.

And Christmas was a bit muted, but we still did it and enjoyed it. I think you'll know what you need to do and how you need it to go.

The first Christmas after my mother died was very hard. Like other posters have said she was the glue that held us together. We floundered for years but now we’re in a good place and talk about her with ease but on Christmas Day there’s still a tinge of sadness. ❤️