Not everyone's happy.

This is going to be the third Christmas since my husband died. Silly as it sounds, there are 2 things that have changed at Christmas, apart from the obvious, that he`s not here. On Christmas Eve, we`d bring all the parcels downstairs ready for the morning, I`d have the easy job of sitting there and handing them to him saying who they were for, and he`d put them on the appropriate piles. Then on Christmas morning, I still miss him handing me my presents from him, and telling me in which order to open them. I don`t think that that will ever go away.

I am blessed to still have my DH with me but recognise that at some point in the future one of us will be left behind. We have been together since I was 16 and he is the most lovely person I have ever met. We do everything together and spend almost all our time together and it frightens me to think how one of us would cope without the other. The chances are that day will come.
I was equally blessed in my mum and dad in that they were lovely people too. We don't talk about them every Christmas, it's been many years since they died. I don't think of them every day. But they are here in my heart for always. They will never be forgotten because they are in my mind. Who I am is mainly due to them. This year we will drink a toast to my dear brother who died on New Years Day. I think of him often . Sometimes we say do you remember..... when I am with my sister-in-law. But even on the days I don't say his name or mention him or my mum and dad to anyone I still think of them in my mind.
To those who have lost a loved one I can understand why you want their names to be mentioned, memories to be shared but if at times they are not, it doesn't mean they are not in the thoughts of others, in their quiet times or in their personal moments of rememberance.

For some reason we seem to have lost so many family members around Christmas. Either just before or they were very ill throughout Christmas and succumbed shortly after. However, both my children were born around Christmas and I have lovely memories of relaxing at home with a new baby and Christmas decorations. So I have mixed emotions. We have a toast to 'absent friends' and always talk about them. I suppose it's a time that crystallises family moments.
On a slightly different topic, I was once very annoyed to be asked by a busybody acquaintance if I was 'grieving properly' after the death in an accident of a family member!!

Maw, I, and I think lots of us on gn, will remember paw and the other loved ones we know about as they are part of the people we know, and value, on here.

I think I do agree.
I have been thinking of how people would talk about a family member who is perhaps abroad, travelling, working away from home. Still absent but nobody would feel the need to tiptoe round. Nevertheless their absence is a source of sadness.
What I was trying to say earlier (badly) was that I do not want to be the only person to refer to Paw, I woukd love people to say “Paw would have enjoyed/ loved/ loathed this”. Or “remember when we did/ate/visited/saw whatever”
I want to keep him “alive” in our hearts - not just my own, to quote the line I have chosen for his stone
“To live in hearts of those we leave behind, is not to die”

Cloying sentiment ?

My aim was simply to suggest reading the thread heading judiciously before stumbling into a topic that could be upsetting

Yes, being sensitive and aware. I think that was the point of the OP too, wasn't it?

However, as my bereaved friend said, she wanted no one to tread on eggshells around her, especially at Christmas time because she had lost her beloved son, and I know what she means.

She said cloying sentiment and people seeing her as 'only' bereaved and sad made her quite cross. She needed people to mention his name but to carry on as normal. She said there was 'an elephant in the room' when she met ex colleagues for Christmas lunch - they didn't mention their grown children and their plans for fear of hurting her. She was the one who said " Look, X isn't with me now, he has gone, and it makes me sad, but right now, today at lunch, I am not wearing a 'bereaved' badge, so can we pull these bloody crackers please and wear our paper hats?!"
Everyone laughed and the conversation stopped being stilted.

She had a good time, but as she said, she will still cry for him at Christmas time (usually when she is alone) and those family members who feel his loss will do too.

Day6 that comment was made in a very specific context and clearly did not apply across the board. What bothered me was the repeated 'bumping' and 'anyone else ?' That's what I found hyped-up and just a bit ott.

I made/make it very clear that I am not dreading Christmas nor do I begrudge anyone their celebrations.

My aim was simply to suggest reading the thread heading judiciously before stumbling into a topic that could be upsetting.

I am thankful I don’t have to make an effort, I always loved Christmas , now I live alone and have no need to make an effort, don’t like the thought of having to do so , never had to

Thank you, gmelon.
Its nice to have it put into words, every now and then, even though people are very kind, on the whole.

I've not underestimated anyone.
Where in my OP have I said that Gransnetters aren't sensible enough to tread carefully???

Can I mention that I'm thinking about the ladies on here living with loss without anyone thinking it's a slur on them and the whole of Gransnet?

However anything less than hyped-up excitement is apparently not acceptable.

Oooh. That's a bit of a sweeping statement mcem.

I think we all celebrate (or not) as we see fit, don't we? I have friends who see Christmas as nothing more than an expensive time of year and a nuisance and they long for it to be all over. That's fine, isn't it? To each their own....

I'd like to be remembered as someone who loved Christmas, just as I remember that about my own parents and in laws. I also remember an old aunt (a friend of the family we called auntie rather than a relative) who didn't celebrate. I remember visiting her and she brought a branch in from the garden, took three very old and battered tissue wrapped baubles out of a drawer and told us to hang them on it. She then had us listen to Peter and the Wolf and before we left she gave us each a handful of mealworms and had us scatter them in the garden for "the robins". I remember those visits with affection.

We are all different, aren't we?

I agree, life goes on, and those we have loved and lost would want it to be that way.
Nevertheless Christmas may bring both happy and incredibly sad memories to the surface.
I have a very recently bereaved friend facing her first Christmas without her DH of 54 years of married life, and there will be those on this thread with similar stories.
We don’t have to be jolly all the time, and most understand this.

I don't think you are being unreasonable at all, but I think you are underestimating your fellow Gransnetters.

Thanks absent. You said it for most of us. I think we are old enough and wise enough to appreciate so many people find Christmas a difficult time of year because of bereavement, estrangement and other concerns.

I have to tread carefully around a dear friend who has lost her son. He died about four years ago but as a family they loved Christmas and of course it's not the same now without him. However, they all make an effort at Christmas because he loved the festivities. She said they 'wear masks of enjoyment' so they don't bring others down, particularly younger family members.

I think Christmas is a very poignant time for most people and I know there are moments I shed a few tears for loved ones no longer here. Sensitivity is the name of the game, isn't it? But life goes on.. I remember my Mum saying this to me a few hours before she died, just after Christmas several years ago. I think all our loved ones would want us to go on and be happy.

I love the idea of firing off a canon in salute to parents.
Mr P and I celebrate the birthdays of our loved ones who have died. Christmas and New Year, for us,is a celebration of the family who are still with us. Life can be cruel. So far I can cope but the day may well come when I can’t.
I send love to those who need extra hugs and support in the coming weeks. ?

My grandfather died 2 years ago at the end of December. It wasn't unexpected but he collapsed suddenly. (His heart was failing and we knew he didn't have long; we just didn't expect that he would pass so suddenly.) He passed on my grandmother's birthday - particularly significant because she had died just over 2 years before.

Last Christmas we got together at their home on the anniversary of Grandpa's death and are doing the same this year. (They lived on a farm and my aunt and uncle live in a separate house on the same property so have kept the house for family use.) Dad is a gun enthusiast and last year brought a little cannon he had purchased. It fires golf balls. He shot it off a couple of times into an empty field as a salute to his parents.

Blimey Baggs, I totally agree with you.

Miss A , I massively admire you.

Maw, siblings eh?

Ah, thank you.
I'm sitting here looking at her big, beautiful tree, and remembering the struggle she had to make Christmas nice. She couldn't breathe well, but she put the tree up every year.
Christmas, birthdays, and so on are markers of time in her battle (10 years) so of course they are going to be sad.

MissA, so sorry to hear of the loss of your daughter ??

Not holding my breath mumofmadboys she and I ceased to have a close relationship years ago.
There is history which I thought we might have put behind us after so many years but she is strange and I think, still resents me.

She was a single parent.
The boys have been separated, the older one lives with his dad, the younger with me.
I was just thinking too, I can remember her health gradually declining by Christmas each year.
We had booked a holiday cottage to go away last Christmas.
Then she could no longer drive because the cancer had spread to her brain, so we talked about getting a taxi.
Then finally, she said "mum, I'm not well enough". She died before Christmas anyway.

Hope your sister contacts you Maw before Christmas.
I'm sorry MisssA that your GC have lost their mum and you your DD. Are the GC and her OH coping ?

Christmas doesn't mean that much to me, but it did to my daughter, and the two children she has left behind.
That's why I find it particularly sad.

Don't 'censor' yourself, mcem.

I think I might have said in the past that I didn't see why its being Christmas would make a difference to grief. That said, and still feeling that way myself, I do 'get', in an unemotional way, why its being Christmas makes a difference to other people because I see the effort other people put into Christmas preparations.

It doesn't make any difference to me because Christmas is no big deal to me. I'm allowed to feel like that and to say so without anyone taking offence. How I feel is how I feel. It's not an insult or anything negative towards anyone else. I guess I just don't feel much nostalgia about Christmas. My happiest times have not been at Christmas and neither have my saddest ones.