Recently, a well-meaning person mentioned that the holidays must be easier now that I have a daughter of my own.  I mumbled something about how grateful I was for my little family and how happy I was to have the chance to make new memories.  Although these sentiments are true, even as the words were tumbling out of my mouth I was aware that they didn’t sound like me at all.  I am slowly realizing that once you have your “own” family there is a great deal of pressure to create new traditions, to move forward, to leave the past in the past.  Last year I found myself manically manufacturing memories in an effort to keep the old ones at bay. There were piles of gifts, a towering pine, and glittering sugar cookies.  I forced three-month-old Abra into an upscale toy store to select a special gift in the interest of capturing the perfect shot with my camera on Christmas Day.  She limply palmed the overpriced wooden rattle and screamed through the photos, turning eight shades of red, a visceral reminder that the shimmer of new beginnings can blind us to the realities of moving forward.  At the end of the season I felt hollow, as if my insides had been scooped out, the past gnawing more furiously than ever, my contrived efforts to start afresh having made things worse.  Joyful memories don’t overwrite painful ones; they merely exist alongside one another.  Whatever holidays I envisioned for the future, I realized, had to allow room for both.

There is a part of me that is conditioned to feel a creeping sense of dread when the calendar flips to November, a sensation that doesn’t fully pass until the whitewash of the New Year paints everything clean.  But the truth is that every year is different, and I often don’t know how I’ll feel until the season is pressing upon me.  There are some years where I try to feel happier – or sadder – than I actually am.  Ask any bereaved person and they will tell you that there is a script of how you “should” act in the wake of a loss, whether that loss is days or years in the past.  Although my mother died nine Thanksgivings ago there is something about the holidays that makes it feel as if it were yesterday.  At this time of year I often feel as if I’m negotiating a tightrope, trying to strike the right balance between still-mourning and now-living.  With a baby in tow the performance has become much more complicated; I find myself trying to scaffold a hopeful new life on top of the old, even as the structure threatens to crumble under the weight of new construction.

Last Thanksgiving came and went without much incidence, perhaps because I was too consumed with the chaotic business of caring for a newborn baby to give the weight of the day much thought.  Studying the photographs, I put on a good pantomime of what Moving On should look like.  There is Abra in a festive bib, me standing sentry over the turkey, guests caught up in the tinkle of laughter.  Perhaps this led people to believe that my daughter had erased whatever residue of my grief remained.  But this year, for whatever reason, I feel as if I am wading through a thick molasses of loss, dragging my feet through the sludge, my grief surprisingly raw.  By all accounts this year should be easier than last, but it is not.  Grief isn’t linear.  Loss is not a balanced equation.

Like most children, I loved the holidays.  But whenever I became too ebullient my mother was quick to say, “The holidays are hard for lots of people, for lots of different reasons.”  As a little girl this tempered me, confused me; even a bit of shame slunk in.  My mother also lost her mother relatively young (my grandmother was 53 when she died, my mother 35) and, never one to overtly express her emotions, I can see now that she was wrestling with the perpetual tug-of-war between the past and the present that unfolds this time of year.  There is something about the holidays that asks us to haul out everything we’ve kept neatly packed away and spill its messy contents all over our lives.  Old traditions clash against new ones.  Expectations gnash their ferocious teeth, threatening to swallow us whole.  And always there is the anchor of the past weighting us down as we attempt to journey forward.

As we move into the holiday season this week, filled with light and laughter, think about someone who has suffered a loss this past year:  a death, a job, a home, their health, a pregnancy, a relationship, a way of being in the world, a dream.  Don’t assume that they are healed, nor that they are hurting; grief has a timeline all its own.  Let them be who they need to be.  Loss comes in all shapes and sizes, and you don’t have to look very far to find someone whose life has been impacted.  Maybe you don’t need to look further than yourself.  If that is the case, handle yourself with kid gloves.  Know that, no matter what this year has brought, next year will be different.

My intention this season, as in all years, is to simply let the holidays be what they are, whether that means honoring the pull of the past, the reality of the present, or the promise of the future.  On Thursday, surrounded by a small group of friends and my little family, whom I love so much, we will feast on a heritage turkey, the one genuine holiday tradition that I’ve forged in this new life, the thread that connects the past to the present.  Between baking biscuits and making gravy and shuttling the turkey into the oven I plan on building a small altar:  a poem, the flicker of candles, photos old and new, a tangible reminder of what I am grateful for, a reflection of what I will forever miss.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers, wherever the day finds you.