The Christmas Pillow

It is Christmas Day, 2010—thirty-four days after Anne has died.  It's a lovely, wonderful day where I am, surrounded by some of my family.  We open gifts after Christmas eve worship.  For a moment here or there I had a few tears at that worship service, but mostly I was enveloped in the joy of the Nativity Feast.  I am again grateful for being so formed by our worship and spiritual tradition that I can focus on Christ in Christmas even when some of the other elements (such as my changed family status) are difficult.  Christ is born today!  

If that were not so, if the Word had not become flesh, then Anne's death would be a truly monumental tragedy in the history of the world.  As it is, I know she gets to spend Christmas in the arms of Jesus, looking upon the beauty of the Incarnate One in the full joy of eternal life.  She gets to hear the angel songs in person rather than just through scripture..."Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all with whom God is pleased."  I am grateful for that gift of peace in my life today.

It is not that this Christmas Day 2010 is absent my grief--far from it.  The body will insist on what the mind seeks to suppress.  I got a great gift from my brother and sister-in-law and their three sons.  They gave me the full length body pillow I had wanted.  I wanted that to help me sleep better.  I spent so many years turned on my side with my arms wrapped around Anne for a least a few minutes each night.  That habit will be long is disappearing, if ever.  So I wanted to wrap my arms around something soft and cuddly to deal with that absence.

I opened the bag, pulled out the pillow and wrapped my arms around it.  The tears came immediately--not a gush by any means...just those tears of nostalgia and longing.  I could feel my arms around  Anne for at least a few moments.  So there was joy mingled with the sadness.  That response wasn't somehow tied to Christmas.  It was tied to Anne.  And the grief was in my arms at least as much as in my heart and mind...somatic memory.  The memories came to me at the level of my arms, my hands, my fingers.  My conscious mind, my pre-frontal cortex was just barely involved in the process.  Thus the memories were powerful and immediate.

For many, such a Christmas would be an impossible time.  Again, memory has a life of its own.  So many have commented on how hard that first holiday would be for me.  I felt a bit guilty because for me that wasn’t really the case.  As a working pastor, I didn't spend much of Christmas with family: weeks of fevered preparation, several Christmas Eve services, usually a Christmas day service, and then a collapse into exhaustion that afternoon.  In between we opened presents and ate a little holiday food.  

I knew that Steve and Greg were missing Mom more at Christmas than I.  We simply didn't have the habits of other families that I would miss all that much.  It's hard to miss what I didn't have.  We did our family times elsewhere on the calendar, and those times will be more difficult, I think.  

The paradox is that allowed me to feel the joy of Christmas more probably than many who are early in grief.  That was a tremendous blessing that first Christmas.

Now a postscript on that gift of a pillow.  I am joyfully, lovingly and gratefully married.  So that long pillow has taken on a new life.  Our granddaughter was fearful when she got her "big girl bed" at our house, that she might fall between the bed and the wall.  So we put that pillow in a new pillow case and used it to fill that threatening space.  With that buffer securely located, she could sleep in peace and safety.

I can't think of a better way to use that gift.  That's how healthy memory works.  It provides the raw material for gratitude and for building new memories.  That's what makes a real Christmas gift.