Every year I try to be ready for the holiday season so that when it arrives, I can enjoy it. It is a perennial battle that I have yet to win. This year, for some reason, I have higher hopes it might work.  It might be because it is our first Christmas in our little home. I must scale back including no fresh tall tree…it gives me permission to shake things up. And perhaps with small edits to our family traditions, I can find some joy this holiday.

I remember Zane teaching me about the difference between joy and happiness.  He said happiness is fleeting.  It is a quick moment in time you feel elated because of something or someone. Joy is eternal. Joy is a deeper, quieter, peaceful feeling of contentment.  It is the emotion one should seek.

Once, when I told him about doing something I wasn’t happy to do but that I had completed it and had done a great job, he smiled.  He said, “but mom, you did not do it with joy”.   If I had, the experience would have been so much more.  How did my son get to be so wise? These were the type of lessons he taught. I must remember this one; that joy is found in everyday, simple things.

What I hope he does know, is the joy he brought me.  I wrote to Zane.

“…How much joy I have had in raising you, sharing life with you, watching you morph into this beautiful, caring empath.  Oh, the joy you brought me.  The laughter. The insights to life. The love. My soul is filled with the love you shared with me. I have enough hugs and kisses from you that will sustain me while I live here on earth. I was looking for more joy and the truth was, with you, I had enough.”

As we prepare for the holidays, and even beyond the holidays, let us try to remember that there is joy even in grief. We can find that soft feeling joy brings in the memories of times spent with those we love. We can feel our hearts warm to the recalling of conversations and adventures we had with our loved ones. And the joy that these thoughts bring us, will always belong to us.  Even when our loved ones are not physically here, they will always be our joyful memories. May that awareness help ease your grief.