Unbroken

Ooof…It’s been a rough couple years. The holidays weren’t for me this year. I just couldn’t get myself interested in sleepwalking through our family traditions. Gift giving, decorating, “cheering” with cocktails…it just didn’t feel right. Friends and family were understanding and so this Christmas, we ran away and “hid”.

No eggnog, no tree, no presents. No Christmas carols, no Christmas card. No ho-ho-ho. At times, it felt a bit “Scrooge-ish”, but I think Tiny Tim would understand.

So here we are…almost through the “holidays” and at the beginning of a new year. Of course, that brings me to looking forward. I admit that last year…I assumed we were through the worst of it. I mean, suffering the tragic loss of our son. 2025 had to be better…right? I don’t remember doing a lot of pre-reflection about 2025. I didn’t set goals or “intentions”. I don’t think I spent a lot of time musing about how I could approach the new year with “self-improvement” in mind. I watched Anderson and Andy and at 9:05 I went to bed thinking…okay. Time to move on. On New Year’s Day, I watched the parade and ate the snacks while watching all the football games. January 2, 2025 – just another day with a new number in the ones place. (Fellow first grade teachers will understand.)

I’m not going to review 2025. Though this did resonate with me…(sorry – I don’t have the credit.)

Obviously, there were great moments and events. And also, there were some serious lows. I will say that in these last weeks, I have been reflecting about life as it is today. And I mean…today. Not last year, not last decade, not yesterday, not tomorrow. Today. Life events have definitely impacted my reflections…I’m learning a lot about the effect of grief on a person. On me. I admit, a lot of my resources are from social media. There are some great blogs, videos, posts, podcasts…that are helping me navigate through my losses. I’m learning that there is no past tense for grief. Only the progressive tense – I am grieving. It will always sit with me…in my heart. In my soul. There is no “grief” in the past. It will always be my “present”.

Yesterday I ran across a post that really resonated with me. In a nutshell, it explained that with each loss of your “person”, the griever becomes a new person because you literally aren’t the same person you were when you had your person in your life. The griever changes…becomes a different person with each loss. Wow. That perfectly describes where I am sitting today…trying to figure out who I am in this new configuration of life.

Which brings me to the annual “new year” resolutions, intentions, reformations…I’ve never been much of a goal-setter or a resolution-writer, but this year feels a bit different. Can I use this opportunity to re-think/re-imagine how I walk through this life as a new entity? I’m not a wife. My “partner for life” is not going to be on the couch watching The Rose Bowl with me – screaming “Roll Tide”! I can’t say I’m not Niels’s mom and yet, he’s not here for New Year’s Day snacks, helping me in the kitchen. I’m not the same person without Glen and without Niels. (Did you know that when your husband dies, you’re a widow, when your parents die, your an orphan, when you have a child, you’re a mom, but when your child dies…we don’t have a word in the English language for that new role…and yet it’s one of the most profound roles a parent can experience.)

So I started the new year with a Danish tradition that I ran across yesterday. (Glen’s mom was 100% Danish so this feels right.) The Danes ring in the New Year by smashing crockery (dishes) on the doorsteps of friends and neighbors. They collect old dishes throughout the year and then they go smashing their way around their community. It’s the Danish version of caroling through the neighborhood! In the morning, you wake up and open your front door to see the shards. The larger the pile on your doorstep, the more loved and appreciated you feel. You can consider yourself blessed, shielded from evil spirits and filled with good luck for the coming year! I love this!

So yesterday, I went out in the rain and ran to the nearest thrift store to purchase some crockery. Don’t worry…I didn’t drive around the neighborhood terrorizing my friends with the sound of crashing plates at their front door, but at 9:05, after watching Anderson and Andy, I DID smash some at my own front door. The mere act of throwing the “crockery” to the ground and hearing the sound of them shattering was weirdly cathartic and rewarding. As I tossed each dish to the ground, I thought about Glen and Niels…about my grief and about my love. I thought about moving through life in 2026 in a new way. The crashing dishes gave me a strange sense of closure for the things that happened that “shaped me”. I also had a feeling of relief and openness to 2026.

So 2024-25 – you can suck rocks. Good bye “evil spirits” and bad juju.

2026 – Look out for the evolving me! Not broken. Just “becoming”. (With a nod to Michelle Obama for the turn of a word.)