Grief Does not Make Sense......

christdefinesme said:

Interesting, I am feeling my mother's absence more this Christmas than
the previous two Christmas'. I wonder, if it is because I am starting to
really settle into sensing her absence more completely than I have before.
I used to feel so much of her memory, that many times it felt as if she
was still around, as if I could just pick up the phone and give her a call.
But it's been a long time since I felt that.
My grandmother passed in August, my mother's mother.
She was a very important person in my life, I loved
her dearly. We had a close relationship, and her passing was beautifully
centered in the Lord, and I finally was able to experience a "beautiful" death,
and it was quite healing, and amazing to experience. Yet, I feel my grandmother's
absence may have reinforced the absence of my mom, and dad.
I am not sure if this is the reason, but it doesn't make sense to me that I miss
my mom more this year than the previous two, and that the absence is more
acute.
I don't like it......
It taints things.
It doesn't make sense that things are more empty this year.

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I think you are right that this greater loss awareness is at least partly due to the reduction in sensing her still around you.

In the early days following the loss of a loved one we are constantly reminded of them through the routines of everyday life in which we used to interact with them: phone calls, meetings, shared hobbies, etc. We are filled with anguish whenever we are reminded of them in this way, but the sense of total loss is perhaps not yet so formed in us. However, as time passes, these routines gradually disappear. The sharp pangs of anguish and despair that we felt during the early period give way to a more melancholy ache in one's heart from missing them and longing for them. I think it becomes more akin to a feeling of loneliness without them, even though we may be surrounded by many people.

Christmas is a particularly difficult time because it is traditionally a time for family gatherings with an emphasis of love, peace and friendship, and we re-enact our very own intimately special family traditions, and surround ourselves with an emotionally-rich environment of music and candlelight (at least in the northern hemisphere!). The cold winds of death do not belong in such a warm and loving haven, the memories of lost loved ones hang like heavy weights on our hearts.

When a loved one leaves this earth, a part of our own soul leaves with them, like an elastic twine stretching out to the very beyond to which we cannot yet go. We are no longer entirely of this world, but hang suspended by this twine somewhere in the no-mans-land between here and there. A twine that is sewn into the tenderness of our heart, which feels every tremble of that twine every time it is plucked or tugged by the memories of our past.

It is the time when we need most to turn to our eternal hope, away from the emptiness of death's awesome finality.