Good Mourning Grief

A blog about my adventures as a grief warrior

Tag: #druggeddrivingmonth

Switching Up the Holiday Outlook

December 3, 2023 /

I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention that this month is Drunk & Drugged Driving Prevention month. Last year 40,000 loved ones perished due to someone choosing to drive impaired.  This number does not touch anywhere near the real number of those devastated; the many more hundreds of thousands effected by such loss. The dreams and plans and hopes, smashed with no chance of ever being the same again.  It happened to us. But I’m not going there. This is the Christmas season. 

The holidays are a time of hope and miracles and love and faith. I want that. I want to replace the sound of a busy mall with the crackling of a fire. I want the smells of gingerbread and mulled wine filling my home. I want my heart to feel the quiet peaceful morning before the demands of the season come rushing in to take over. I want that Hallmark truth about this season. Each year, I believe I have tried to make it special and ease the pain of Zane not being here. And each New Year, I debrief with a sigh and a shrug that next Christmas will be different.  So why do I think this pattern will ever change?  Because I need it to. That’s why.

Sometimes our grief permeates into a sadness that we become too comfortable with to change.  This season brings an excuse to hold tight to our grief.  “The holidays are the heaviest time of year for those mourning” we are told. I don’t disagree, but I am starting to think that I might be turning this ‘fact’ into an excuse. Should I not be trying harder to get along with my grief if this season is as tough as we know it to be?  When I look at the list of all things to practice easing grief, those practices go out the window with the common pressures of the oh-too-commercial of a season. Maybe I should work harder on bringing the magic of the season forward and ignoring the business side of Christmas. 

My daughter texted me, “I want Zane to run up the stairs and open his stocking with me”. She is feeling the apprehension of the season’s loud message that we are to be with the ones we love. When that is impossible, to do what we used to do before our loved ones left, we need to switch up the holiday outlook. I am going to try this. For my daughter.  For Zane.  For me.  I am going to embrace the real reason why this time of year is to be celebrated. I am going to take my grief and show it a good time.

This year I am going to focus on what can I do to celebrate, include, honor Zane over the holidays. I’m going to take a day each week to do something that brings the holidays home. With Zane.  He loved to “rock the first candy-cane of the season”. He loved taking pictures of the bright lights.  He loved snuggling in his blanket with a good book or a great show. He loved to connect with friends over a drink and bake cookies to share. He loved to build a snowman. He knew how to stop and smell the roses. I need more of that. I need more Zane in my life.

I know that being still raises our vibration, our awareness that those we love are with us.  Perhaps that is the practice I need this holiday season. Whether it eases my sadness or not, I am aware that it will never be as we want, so finding a bittersweet compromise might improve my holiday debrief in the New Year.

A Message in December

December 18, 2022 /

Zane wrote a poem for a friend who died of an overdose.  At the request of this friend’s mother, Zane read it out loud at the funeral. The title was “If you sedate, don’t expect to wake”. It was a harsh poem about addiction and the ramifications it brings.  Including death.

I’d like to start by removing the stigma of this topic. Addiction has many connotations, none of them are pretty. I have many friends, wonderful parents, good people who have lost a child to addiction.  They lost a child. They will be in pain for the rest of their life. And yet, because of the nature of their child’s death, there is a social stigma, a sideways look, and innuendos of how they failed. My mother used to say, “by the Grace of God, go I”. A line fitting for the smug person who believes that it would never happen to them.   No child declares when they grow up, they want to be an addict.  And I have never met a parent who didn’t struggle, trying to save their child.

My children have seen more friends die at a young age, than our generation did. Our family has experienced addiction on both sides. We have had friends and family members battle this disease, lose to this disease and we lost Zane to a man who was an addict and chose to drive that night. No one is untouched by addiction. CDC informs us that over 108,000 died of a drug overdose between April 2021 and April 2022. The number keeps rising. Addiction is the pandemic that continues to go ignored.   

The truth is we are all connected, and the village has a problem. Something is wrong and we all need to fix it for the sake of our children. Let’s first agree that addiction can happen to anyone. Let’s open our minds to alternate ways to healthcare besides dispensing opioids and narcotics without any assessment or follow up. Let’s open our hearts to those struggling (the addict and their family) and offer our love and prayers. Let’s open our wallets and support the organizations that are trying to find answers and those that are helping heal the broken. Let’s believe that there is an answer. And let’s become a part of that answer. For the sake of those who sedate and will not wake.

December belongs to all of us.  As we celebrate the holidays, the magic of the season and experience all the warm and fuzzies, we are reminded that it is Drunk & Drugged Driving month. I am of the belief that if we had fewer people self-medicating, we would have fewer people driving impaired. I’d like to focus on healing those in pain, rather than punishing them. We are all vulnerable.

© 2024 Good Mourning Grief

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑