Broken
I was thinking today about my family — the ones who are gone. My father (who died from congestive heart failure), my mother (who died indirectly from liver and congestive heart failure) and my brother (who died from pancreatic and hepatic cancer). By the ends of their lives, they were all broken in some way. Missing them makes me broken. The “complicated” grief I feel, that I live with daily, makes me broken.
But I have to wonder: aren’t we all broken? Isn’t that what all that literature is about? Paradise Lost, the Romantic poets, Hamlet’s fatal flaw, Achilles’ hubris. Popular culture is filled with broken people – some funny, some telling the truth, some exploited, some exploiting. We love to see the flaws in people. The news is still crowing about Tiger Woods’ infidelity, Jon & Kate references keep cropping up, and tis the season for the daily “broken” family story on the local news. We gravitate toward brokenness, and yet culturally, we all believe the goal to be happy, uneventful, easy lives.
I read or heard somewhere, from someone who had experience with cancer professionally and personally, that the trick to life is not having everything go your way, but having the resilience to survive these problems – whether they are great or small – and the urge to recover and find the good parts. Holidays are difficult times for this, if one has lost family. Re-inventing traditions that go on without them is harder than simply ignoring these 40 days and just getting through them.
The bright spot in this should be the memories shared, but it is too easy to focus on the hole – much like that void on the tree where there needs to be more twinkle lights and maybe another globe or two. Is it too corny to say look at the whole tree? Maybe, but I’m sticking with that.
I think I’d rather have a tree with voids, a Charlie Brown tree, than no tree at all.
(Already I’m a day behind Holidailies… so HA! a goal to shoot for during the rest of the month!)
Thank you for writing this. What you said is right on. I’m missing a few people too. This time of year only increasing that “missing” feeling. Thanks for sharing your perspective on it. Christmas trees with voids… in it’s own way, that is inspriring.
So sorry to hear about the loss of your family. It’s a tough road. My Mom has been gone 16 months and at times it seems the wound will never heal.
I just miss them a lot. I’m “healed” but it’s like I keep knocking against the scars and getting reminded.
I do have my little rebellions: I bought a really cheap and durable set of knives, which I put in the dishwasher and never sharpen. This is blasphemy in our family. Ha!