Restoring The Spirit of Christmas In Ones heart- While Grace Enters Our Grief…
I’ll never forget the “alone” I felt the first Christmas I spent by myself… just barely 18. My first apartment in the city and a winter storm that would prevent me from making it home to family. My roommates made it out days before leaving just myself and the glow of the tree, with one large present that had my name on it. Falling asleep to the sound of Christmas carols I awoke the 25th and upon opening the present from my friends I had to smile at their attempt to humor me. It was one of those art pieces a picture where you had to stare for a moment to reveal the real image. I forever could not achieve the ability to see past to the image. A card read that “maybe it’s perception or perhaps perspective… perceive the image Jacqueline” I took to making my tea and made my calls to family and friends and all the while pondering the damn image. The picture did indeed reveal itself to me later that evening, it was a horse. The year of the horse … for it ever would imprint me in my future years to come. That New Years Eve I met and fell in love with my husband, the one and only man who could ever captivate my heart and leave me grieving these last three years in his absence as he departed our world for a better one. So here I sit another Christmas without his masculine presence to embrace the season and the children with. I think back to that first Christmas alone and the empowerment I felt with the imprint of the horse. Horses became a part of our lives. Still are apart of our lives but not to the pleasurable degree they were with his presence to share the joy with. It is true that Christmas will never be the same and that alone carries a new truth. It doesn’t have to be lost through. This season we are realizing we are not lost in his absence and that he still very much lives through our memories past and the new memories we are creating doesn’t exclude him. My biggest lesson in allowing myself to feel the spirit of the holidays again was coming to terms with understanding that in the loss of our loved ones we do not have to say goodbye, it’s possible that goodbye is too tainted with the imprint of our suffering. There is a bond between two that never breaks one that intertwines soul within so deep they are etched in the very fabric of our being. As a family and a couple we did everything together … we were a team in all areas and aspects of life. We grew up together, traveled together … created and creation was our biggest truth and love. We loved to create big … and of course our biggest and most valued truth was our three children. He was their world… and he wanted to give them the world. In his presence of self he did. So when he suddenly past… it certainly was as if we lost our entire world to that we existed. Traveling through his departure has been the hardest and saddest experience of my life. Holidays haven’t been easy yet as family we moved through the pain in knowing his love and celebrating if not for him but through him we found the strength. We felt his encouragement in the depths of feeling ever so alone without him. We never let go of our will to survive the loss of him through loving him in movement of ourselves. Albeit many a times it was agonizing and slow and still can be. Yet there is movement in a deeper knowing that death becomes you, an expression you can only truly understand when you’ve lost a loved one so close. There is a solidity in the statement that gives to anew. One learns to feel present even in their absence. When we cultivate the memories, they can never fall from us and allows for one to know the grace that enters in carrying on through our days with their spirits very much alive in our hearts and souls. Giving awareness to a deeper spirit of Christmas carries us. That Christmas eve so many years ago in the start of my life as a young woman the year of the horse brought me to the man that would forever change my world. It’s not the same picture I look at that I sit tonight by the fire writing to a world that I know suffers just as much as I… but a picture of my husband and his horse that captivates and imprints through the hour glass of time… and I whisper to my children and to all, let grace enter your grief. “Maybe it’s perception or perhaps perspective… perceive the image Jacqueline” — Happy Holidays to the world and the man who still makes mine spin.
