It’s Christmas tomorrow in the Christian world. A time of love and hope in a world with seemingly endless problems.
We had the joy of loving our son James for 20 Christmas celebrations, and now 2024 will be our 20th Christmas without James.
We will celebrate as a family, our daughter, her husband, and our two grandchildren. James will be here with us in each of our hearts, each of our souls, and we will speak of James often. What I celebrate most is the resilience that I found deep inside of my soul, what I believe is a genetic predisposition to loving others and life itself. That resilience gave me a path to walk back towards loving life and each other.
When I help others find their own path, or simply encourage then to try, this is James speaking thru me. When I had no footsteps to follow, I would ask myself “What would James want me to do?”. It was always to relearn how to love life.
When I was mentoring James over 20 years, I cautioned him to choose his dreams rationally, aiming high but choosing from the available or attainable choices for today’s happiness. And so, as I rebuilt life around loss, I could no longer touch or hold James, but chose to continue to love James, and also to learn to love life and those around me again. I knew that’s what James would have wanted me to do.
In grief, everyone seeks an easy path, a fast path thru and back to life. Grief is an evolved process that forces us to feel the pain of loss, to stop, reflect, relearn, redefine and rebuild a big part of our soul. When we grieve, we teach ourselves resilience and deeper meaning to our remaining life. This is the love we shared with our lost love one guiding us forward, one step at a time.
It took a long time to heal, to become comfortable with life, to trust life, and to eventually love living life again. But looking back, this profound grief has been the most rewarding and empowering journey of my life, and it continues to guide and power me.
It’s natural to look at what you have lost from a death, I encourage you to look at what you have gained by sharing a significant part of your life with someone you have loved deeply. In grief, waiting to be found again, is the fundamental purpose of the gift of this life, to love others and to love yourself.
Don’t give up, step forward always tethered to the memories of the past loves of your life. It’s what James wanted for me, I’m sure it’s what your loved one would want you to find from their death.
This may not be the Christmas of your dreams, but be resilient and dream and love life from the best available options of today, and dream of building a better tomorrow.
Be well, seek peace, build love, share love, love the life you live today.
Merry Christmas 2024 to all.