Grief During the Holidays: I Miss the Life We Had

There are certain times of the year when memories seem to find us more easily. Grief during the holidays can bring those memories especially close as familiar sights, sounds, traditions, and gatherings remind us of the people we love and miss.

Maybe it’s pulling out decorations you’ve had for years. Preparing a familiar recipe. Hearing a certain song. Looking through old photographs. Or simply remembering how this time of year used to feel when someone you love was still here.

And suddenly you realize you aren’t only missing them. You miss the life you had when they were here.

I don’t think we talk about this part of grief enough.

When we lose someone we love, we understandably focus on the enormous absence of that person. We miss their voice, their touch, their laughter, their presence. We miss being able to call them, sit beside them, tell them something funny, or simply know they are there. But woven into that loss are so many other losses.

We can miss who we were when they were here. We can miss the way our family once fit together. We can miss routines we barely noticed at the time, conversations we assumed we would have again, and traditions that felt so ordinary until the person who helped make them meaningful was no longer there.

Sometimes we even miss the innocence of not yet knowing what it feels like to lose someone we love so deeply. The holidays have a way of bringing all of this into sharper focus.

We may look around a room filled with people we dearly love and still feel the absence of the one who isn’t there. We can be genuinely grateful for the life we have today while simultaneously longing for pieces of the life we had before. Those feelings do not contradict one another.

After Melanie died, I knew I would miss my daughter for the rest of my life. What I didn’t fully understand in those early days was how many other things I would miss along with her.

I missed the way our family felt when she was part of the everyday rhythm of it. I missed knowing there would be another phone call, another birthday, another Christmas. I missed a future I had assumed would include her.

Nearly seven years later, life has continued to change. There have been beautiful moments, new memories, laughter, celebrations, and blessings for which I am deeply thankful. But loving the life I have today does not require me to stop missing the life I had then. And perhaps you need to hear that too.

You don't have to choose between appreciating what remains and grieving what is gone. You don't have to feel guilty because a beautiful moment makes you remember another beautiful moment you wish you could have back. And you don't have to apologize when the holidays awaken a longing for a time in your life that no longer exists.

Grief is not only about missing a person. Sometimes grief is missing an entire world that existed because they were part of it.

As this holiday season begins, be gentle with yourself when those memories come. Let yourself remember. Say their name. Tell the stories. Smile when a memory makes you smile. Cry when another one breaks your heart all over again.

The life you had mattered. The person you shared it with mattered. And the fact that you still miss both is not evidence that you are stuck in the past. It is evidence that love was there. And love leaves an imprint on every life it touches.

We carry that love with us as we continue learning how to live the life that is before us now.