Columns Christmas cannot be drawn on a blank board – it is possible to carry sorrow and be happy at the same time

Christmas is a continuum. It carries with it the memories of the past Christmas and the pressures surrounding it. It is not possible to draw Christmas on a blank board.

I am now celebrating the third Christmas after the man’s death, and it is still not celebrated without him.

My more experienced widow says the first Christmas without a spouse was still unfinished. It is true. New options are being tested, but it is not yet known which of them will remain a tradition.

That doesn’t mean we’re still whining. A departed family member is involved in many ways.

okay, there is little sadness. A quiet moment at the grave. But at the same time, there is a great deal of intimacy: here is the family that shares the same feeling. So close we only feel it at the grave, elsewhere we are more separate.

But now we also feel the joy of liberation at Christmas: It is no longer necessary to put boxes from the peeling of the lutes themselves. No more packing over a hundred gifts.

It is also allowed to laugh at the deceased. It has been sworn that there will be peas on the table again, the old-fashioned jars of peas that were a whiff of Christmas for the father.

It is a little even wild joy that we could come up with new traditions. Christmas lot? Crazy that the boys are both adults and can buy red wine for the table.

Perhaps some family is also relieved of the loss. No more fear at Christmas. But the feeling remains in the mind.

Major the teaching of widowhood has been that it is possible to bear sorrow and still be happy at the same time. The loss is somewhere present, but still the feeling of joy is also completely true.

I didn’t understand that before. I didn’t realize how a man mourned his dead daughter every day, even though he was happy with us.

It easily feels like a failure if you can’t make your loved ones happy.

Or deny yourself and your loved ones the right to be happy and happy, the right to live life. As if it would offend the memory of the deceased.

Those absent do not need external signs of grief. It is a Pharisaic Christmas party that is forced to have lye fish on the table because the deceased wanted to.

Sometimes relatives and acquaintances measure the length and quality of mourning. Sometimes you do it yourself. As a tip and encouragement, I declare Christmas peace to all those who have lost:

It is possible to love the new and still remember the old.

The author is the editor of HS’s Sunday edition.