Sitting With Grief

Every year my family gathers for two Thanksgiving dinners. It’s been tradition where my grandma always makes the turkey, I make the greens, my sister makes the pumpkin pie, my parents buy noodles and rice dishes, and my aunt buys sushi. Asian-American Thanksgiving aka lots of food! Every year before Thanksgiving dinner, we would also go to Dim Sum, which basically we just eat for the entire day. This past year has been an unexpected whirlwind for my family.

Coming this Christmas, it will be approaching a year since we lost my grandpa. We were out of town when we got a call on Christmas Eve that he was admitted to the ER. My dad isn’t one to express feelings or much emotion, and because I grew up around both my parents not expressing feelings or emotion, I’ve learned to do the same and it’s only gotten progressively worse over the years. I was never close to my grandpa - I’ve had maybe 2-3 interactions a year with him because of Holiday gatherings but rarely talked or got to know him. He also was very to himself and now that I think about it, I never felt like I wanted to get to know him…in addition to my Chinese speaking capabilities that kind of suck now. It wasn’t until we lost him that I got to know a bit more about him through my dad, who was finally sharing some memories while we were planning the service. This was also when my dad had asked me to do one of the hardest things you could asl your daughter to do - speak/translate the eulogy at the service. When I got the call from my mom Wednesday morning at work, I cried. I haven’t cried since like 2014. This could be due to a lack of feeling emotions or I’ve just gotten really accustomed to staying flat and moving on. I was very shocked I cried because I felt like I barely knew him, but here I was crying my eyes out for him. I told myself it was me crying for my dad rather than me crying for my grandpa. It almost felt cathartic to cry for two days after not crying for 4 years. After meeting with my new therapist, she helped me see that

most of my anxiety and worry is probably due to anticipated anxiety

around how my family would feel or act in response to the Holidays coming. This makes sense because I now regret buying tickets to fly home for Thanksgiving. It makes me feel horrible for saying this. I regret it in a sense because again, I have a lot of anticipated worry and anxiety about my family - mostly my mom and aunt. Because my mom’s side is so small, the absence of my grandma will be much more noticeable and I have felt guilty since we lost her that I haven’t cried. I feel that I had already accepted her fate when she was deteriorating in the summer, so it almost felt easier to accept the situation. When my sister called me the week before orientation, I didn’t even bat an eyelash. It was more of a, “Oh, okay. It finally happened” response and no emotion overcame me. No sadness, no tears, no anger. Mostly relief that she wasn’t suffering anymore, but I worried for my aunt and mom. I feel so guilty that I cried for two days for someone I barely knew and nothing - nothing for someone who was basically my 3rd mom. She helped raise and care for me and sacrificed so much. However, talking with my therapist helped me to see that it’s probably a protective mechanism -

“it felt safer to cry for someone I barely knew rather than feeling completely shattered by crying for someone I knew so well and was so close to.”

There’s a fryer in the kitchen that my grandma loved to use during the Holidays. She was the queen of the kitchen. None of us were allowed to enter her space - not even to help. She had to do everything her way because it was tradition. This year, that kitchen will be empty. For the first time, my grandma will not be there to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. It doesn’t seem real. You can understand loss logically and comprehend that she is gone and will not be coming back. Yet part of you still expects to see her at the table and in the kitchen making her infamous sweet and sour pork.

“The first holiday after losing a loved one is often painful and a surreal experience. I feel it in my bones. It rarely shows on my face or flows from my eyelids. Early on, I learned to hide emotion.”

Finding balance between wanting to celebrate the holidays while still suffering the loss of a loved one is tricky and can feel impossible. I know that my family has reacted to the same loss in different manners and each person’s response will be different. I need to remind each of us that there is no shame in needing a little downtime during the holidays, especially when coping with a loss. 

Anniversaries can be the hardest. Birthdays can be the hardest. Holidays can be the hardest. I often hear there is no timeline and that previous experience doesn’t prepare you for the messiness of grief.

“Grief isn’t a straight road; it’s a maze where I have found myself looping back to where I was before numerous times.”

This doesn’t mean that I’m not working my way toward the way through. I am still in the process of trying to understand why I felt this way with my therapist. 

Let me know your thoughts!

-C