Thanksgiving: Reflections on 2022
I’m inclined to start off with a quip of some sort like “2022 was the cruelest year,” but that’s what I always do—or did—and I’ve learned recently hat approach not only tends to lead me away from addressing the reality of difficult or sad situations, but away from acknowledging and processing them. Then I miss how those situations have transformed into new, exciting, and happy ways of living. I find in this week of Thanksgiving that I have a lot to be thankful for. The first is a healthier relationship with my old friend grief.
I wrote about my father’s death in my last blog post almost three months ago. A lot has happened since then. In that post I revealed that I’d allowed myself until the First of August to “wallow” in my grief. Dad died on July 6, so I didn’t even allow myself a whole month. I set hard and often harsh limits on myself. And I often set those limits without complete awareness that of what I’m setting limits around. Grief is an energy all its own. How typical of me to decide I could harness it by setting a deadline for ending it. Or believing that by working so hard I could slough it off like extra pounds. Or by making lists of all the things I can do now “that caring for Dad and the house” don’t require any longer.
Though the wallowing did stop on August 1, 2022, I replaced it with two months of hard work emptying the home my father had lived in for 20-plus years and where I’d lived for nine. He wanted us to keep the house. That was his gift to us, and we’d have loved to keep it for all the reasons he wanted us to, but sometimes it just does not make sense. I may tell you about some of the things we considered and why my brothers and I reached the decision to sell it. Or I may not. It was both hard and heartbreaking.
My entire life I’ve packed up and moved on—first as the child of a soldier, then as a young person trying to find her way, then after the ending of marriages. It comes back to you. It’s muscle-memory. I know that assignment.
But as much as I try to hide under stacks of packing boxes, wrapping paper, and rolls of tape, Grief pops up and taps me on the shoulder as if to say, “I’m still here, you know. I’m not going anywhere until you deal with me. Even then I won’t go away, though I may not visit as often.”
Between October 2021 and the first days of November 2022 four men in my life died. They were all significant to me in some way. My former father-in-law and his son, my first husband, my father, and a former brother-in-law. I wasn’t surprised by the impact of my father’s loss. I was surprised by how the other deaths affected me. And I decided to come to terms with why. It’s hard work, it must be done, and it’s worth it as with anyone we let into our lives is. They deserve the time and our attention in death as in life.
In the meantime, I am staying with my brother and his wife at their home in Florida for a while as I think about next steps and formulate a way of living. My youngest brother lives nearby and I have the chance to see him more often, too. It’s good to be with my siblings right now. I feel loved, well cared for, and in the company of others who know my losses better than any others.
There is a window in the room I am in. I love the shape of it, the view, the beautiful tree branches I see through it. Mostly I love the symbolism of it: light, new perspective, a portal to new things. One of the many things I must be grateful for this Thanksgiving week.
