Grief being more difficult to endure on holidays is not a new concept for me, and likely not for you either. This past Thanksgiving was heartbreaking, while Christmas was excruciating. I was glad and relieved when they were over, to be honest, despite my children’s joy.
Valentine’s Day, however, has sneaked up on me. Valentine’s Day is not the holiday I would expect to pierce that white hot center of my grief, and yet this year it happened.
Valentine’s Day is traditionally for couples and sweethearts, not grown adult women and their dead mothers. I am long past the sweetheart stage–my husband moved out almost eight years ago. He lives nearby and we co-parent mostly amicably, but this upcoming holiday is not one of romance for me. There will only be chocolate and flowers if I buy them for myself.
In my house Valentine’s Day is all about my kids and showing them how much I love them. Most years I cut out paper hearts to scatter around the breakfast table, buy them candy, and bake a special dessert.
This year their dad is bringing chocolate, and so I bought them each a plushie–a fluffy bison and a mint green octopus with cute eyes and pink cheeks. I’m hoping to make brownies in a heart-shaped pan and sprinkle mini M&M’s on top before baking.
This was all I was thinking about as I walked through the grocery store, looking forward to hanging out with my two tiny loves (who actually aren’t so tiny anymore), eating brownies, and maybe some Thai takeout for dinner. It would be the ideal Valentine’s Day.
And then I saw it. As I pushed a grocery cart around the displays of stuffed animals, heart-shaped decor, orchids carefully wrapped in cellophane, and baking sprinkles shaped like little pink and white X’s and O’s, there was a display of greeting cards, and one of them stabbed me in the heart.
It was a card from a child to a mother. The entire front of the card was a paper bag with an adorable face and a wide smile like an excited four-year-old. The card read: Mom, I am so full of love for you!
Something in me wanted to grab that card. My mother loved sending greeting cards, and she was definitely a bit extra about it. For years she sent me cards filled with confetti. She collected rubber stamps and covered the entire outside envelope with little stamped pictures in several colors. If a card she bought came with a white envelope by default, she would inevitably leave the white envelope behind and instead take a brightly colored one. Her letters and cards were flamboyantly over the top and clearly stuck out in the pile of bills and junk mail.
But I couldn’t grab that card, because my mother died three and a half years ago. As much as I wish I could send her a card filled with confetti as retribution for all the times I opened cards from her that scattered glitter confetti into every fold and crevice nearby, and as much as I want my children to plaster the envelope with stickers, barely leaving room for the address on the front as she would with her colorful stamps, I couldn’t take it. I had to leave the card behind for a child who has a living mother.
Whatever amount of grief I feel year after year over not having my own sweetheart or romantic life partner pales in comparison to the grief of living as a motherless child and motherless mother.
I still think of myself as her child, and even though I am in my forties, I still have the energy of the big smile and “feel so full of love” for her. What hurts is that love has nowhere to go.
And so if this is you, if you too are mentally composing cards or letters to someone who will never read them because they’re gone, they died, and you are feeling stuffed with love that has nowhere to go, please know that I see you. I’m keeping space for you here.
I checked the internet for advice on how to weather Valentine’s Day with grief and received the usual advice given for any other important day: we should allow ourselves to wallow, treat ourselves kindly, completely ignore the day altogether, or reframe it to focus on other things or people we love and appreciate.
Perhaps it’s my cynicism or depression at work, but these ideas fell a little bit flat for me at first. The snark in me can’t really see how treating myself with a warm bath and watching a movie in my pajamas is going to make my mother’s death stop hurting.
But if I sit with these thoughts for a little longer, they begin to grow on me, especially as I consider that we who are grieving cannot ask for a way to make the hurting stop. Nothing is going to take away our grief. These ideas won’t bring our lost parents back. These suggestions are merely and specifically designed to help us weather the day, to get through the storm, and to make it to tomorrow. In that sense I suppose that for those of us who are grieving, every day is Valentine’s Day. Everyday is a holiday or special day that we need to survive, because even a regular day is missing something for us.
Those of us left behind should take this sort of advice every day. I’ll take any chance I get to watch movies in pajamas with my kids, some popcorn, and a glass of red wine. Those moments keep my grief moving and keep me from focusing on it.
There are certainly times when I want to or need to sit with my grief, to stare at it, dwell in it, and cry, but also I need to survive. We need to survive. For someone who is grieving the loss of a great love, everyday is an excruciating Valentine’s Day. Perhaps the chocolate will help. Also, I am here for you, weathering the same storm.
xoxoxo
