I am not a psychologist, nor a psychiatrist, nor counselor, or what have you. I am not qualified to give any advice. And you will never hear me tell you how to grieve or how long to grieve. I can only truly tell you my story.
My dad was HUGE on Christmas. He was always the one to make a big deal about it. My mama loved it as well, but every year when we sat down to open gifts on Christmas morning, I think my dad was the most excited of all of us. Not so much for his gifts, but he was so very excited about us opening ours. He was like a kid in a candy store. And my Lord, you could've given him a can of Skoal, and he would "ooh" and "ahh" over it like it was the greatest gift in the world.
The Christmas following his death was so incredibly hard. None of us really had the Christmas spirit. It just didn't feel like Christmas without him. We watched Christmas movies, we went shopping together (the three of us), and it just didn't feel the same. The truth is…it just WASN'T the same. HE was missing.
To those of you facing the same, I can only tell you what helped us. We talked about him. We said things like "He would've loved this," or "I wish he could've seen this."
Something I vividly remember, was traveling to White Springs, at the insistence of his coworkers. They had a memorial tree decorated honoring the Park Rangers and Park Staff that had passed away that year. I remember driving to White Springs that night and we all just had a good cry about missing dad on the way.
The truth is…the pain is still there. We still find ourselves grieving him when holidays come or something comes up and you know it would've been important to him. But for us, we always try to talk about him. Laugh about things he said. We try our hardest to remember the good times.
Those of you who are facing this, please, please know, I am always here if you need someone to talk to.
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