Grief and Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2012 by Elea Lee

A few years ago my family had a nightmarish Christmas.

We found ourselves at a mall, just before closing. I felt a special connection with all the other down-to-the-wire last minute shoppers.

In fact, to this day I have a great fondness for those people–the outliers, the late-workers, the Walmart cashiers, health professionals who have to work during the one or two times a year our culture shuts down for “family.”

The “family” in the nativity story is a pretty bedraggled eleventh hour at the mall sort of tableau–teen mom, far from home, no room at the inn…

It is a lonely story. We are all safe in the stable. There may not be a rocking party in it’s quiet grubbiness, but it is the birth of hope.

Come in. There is room for us all…

A Christmas Memory

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Elea Lee

One year after we discovered that our adopted son Charles had abused our children and others we suffered additional blows. More loneliness. Less community.

We had already lost family and close friends, our children’s friends because people treated us as though we were contagious, people we had known for years. The second Christmas brought more loss–from our church.

I went to the grocery store and saw a dear friend from another church. We had a brief conversation in the bread aisle and she saw the pain in my eyes as I told her the short version of our story.

Later that week I was complaining to God–
Why so much pain and loneliness?

I gathered our family and we began to sing Christmas carols. A few minutes later it sounded as though we were not the only singers. We went to our front door to find a group of carolers from my friend’s church singing in front of our house.

My friend was there. She said that after our talk in the bread aisle she felt God telling her to add a stop to their scheduled houses.

I appreciated my friend
I appreciated each singer

But I marvel at this God of Christmas who is able to rebut my loneliness and despair with song. Songs of light in the world.

Grief Poetry

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Elea Lee

I have been a little off today. Not looking in my side mirror enough, burning the toast–I wanted several times today to nap. Just nap. Today was a beautiful day and I could see myself caved up under a quilt.

The old dude I did not see in his shiny jeep would have preferred that.

This time I know what is wrong. It is more than my usual December malaise. It is more than my customary invisible arrow lodged in my sternum.

No. This was the weight of grief. The unavoidable heaviness that accompanies grief–knowing that ordinary families like mine are facing hell for the long haul, knowing we are not safe.

I do hold my children tight and I am constantly aware of their grace in my life.

It hurts to know the terrible thing we all face in death. The sign of a torn universe, waiting for consolation.

Memorial Words

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Elea Lee

The words are familiar, the voices quavering–

a table before mine enemies

Psalm 23 at the memorial for children who should have been safe at school.. What do we do with our grief? With Christmas? With all those presents for the fallen?

I have been praying for the Krims. I knew this holiday season would be terribly hard for them. Now I have this image in my mind–20 homes without their babies.

I keep thinking-they were six, they were six, they were just little.

Yes. I know some were seven. Seven years is long enough to fall in love with a bright light in the world and long enough to know that the dark has grown darker with each light extinguished.

These people will never be the same.
We should never be the same.

Yes. I know that each death hurts and the hurt is the more unrelenting because it was so cruel.

Cruel. Cruel like our enemies. Cruel like Herod ordering the murder of babies. A king who murders children?
This table set for us in the presence of…

Our enemies.
Chief among them, death itself.

We forget sometimes that the baby in the manger is the Man on the cross.

In the presence of our enemies.
He dies
To set this table where light cannot be snuffed out–
No matter what
Heaven

Sandy Hook

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Elea Lee

What if there was a list?
Of things no one wanted
The emptiness in a room
Blood memory
An unrelenting ache
my baby/my baby/my baby
Cannot be…

Worse than death
Stalking us at every turn
will we be
Safe?

No.
Not this time the children’s story
Man with a song leading us into the mountain
because our parents will not

What?
What is it we have not done?
Have not paid
To the coroner
To the cops
To the teeth of the dog
Who guards this hell we have

become
a houseful of memory
Of a Christmas most like the very first, second and third

When armed men broke through doors to wrest
Babes from nursing

Women who retain with their inmost thoughts each scrap of life
This child
This child
Don’t turn away.

Wakeboard Challenge

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Elea Lee

Mom,

my young son says,

it is easy. Hold your feet like this, hold your rope like this and go!

He is right. His form looks good and he is instructing me mildly not because he knows how to wakeboard but because he has watched me face-plant dozens of times.

I can do the small pond ok, but I have a developing fear of the big cable.

The process goes like this:
Strap into your boots
Sit on bench
Grab rope/handle
Watch as a cable hitch traveling at 20 miles an hour zipping toward the rope you have in your hands

The advice is good:
Flex on 3
Watch the rope not your legs
Pretend you are jumping off a bar stool (going 20 miles per hour)
Keep your legs slightly bent, also flexed
Arms and handle at your hip
Hold on tight.

I have gotten off the dock a half a dozen times or so.
When I do if is wonderful–scary, not in my control. Wonderful.

But my fear of the launch process is getting to me. I have to do it enough that I am as comfortable hurtling forward at 20 miles per hour as I am brushing my teeth or riding a bike.

The process requires humility and commitment. And the consistent intellectual decision not to quit. I have to fear failure more than getting pulled across water at 20 miles an hour.

Forgive me if it all reminds me of Jesus.

Christmas Card

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Elea Lee

I once gave someone I loved a copy of Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost.

I am not sure she read it, but I know she did not appreciate it because she told me–

you sent me a book when you should have sent a card!

I am not a card gal. I wrote Fierce Angels as a Christmas card, Just Words was a wedding gift and Just was a PSA.

I used to tell friends I did not do Christmas cards because ours would be crazy weird. Really depressing.

But then I believe as humans our lives are all marred by grief and pain. It is this very reason we need the wee child in the manger.

He came to save us from ourselves.

Today I got a Christmas card from a precious friend. We know each other only because both of us have lost daughters and grieve for them.

Her friendship is treasure to me. The gift of Magi.

Seeing Ghosts

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Elea Lee

The hotel is the same
The furniture is different
The name has changed
But the steps

In the pool where the babygirl
Hurt her foot
Are the same.

I remember

The way the road snakes around
Hills/river oaks
I once ran up and down
But don’t remember
How old her little sister was or
The specific children
Who trailed violence in their wake

We have all gotten
Old since then.

Do you miss him?

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Elea Lee

In the midst of a morning of futility (guarantees are often NOT guaranteed) my young son asks me if I miss my father–a man who died before he was born.

I say yes
Infinite sadness
I tell him yes. I do.

I tell him that he looks a bit like his grandfather and that helps. He asks if his grandfather likes the athletic wear he favors.

He is so good at connecting himself
To the identities of ghosts
This fully living child
I love.

Homesick Christmas

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Elea Lee

So. Being an army brat; homesickness was a big issue. Nothing in the routine ordering of life’s calendar evokes greater nostalgia, more intense pathos than the hoopla of American Christmas.
It can make us feel homesick.

But none of it is real. All the flashy lights, saccharine music, bubbly party dresses in the world cannot begin to fill the void of the solitary manger.

We need that baby.

We need Him because He is hope. He is the inexplicable star in an inky dark sky. He is our Ransom.

And all we do to “celebrate Christmas” can make us feel that much more shipwrecked if we don’t cut through all the noise and plastic.

And push toward the quiet winter manger. What God in His right mind puts His Son in the arms of a girl in the smelly dark of a stable?

Jesus was born homeless
Because He is our home
And we are sick without him

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: grief