New Year’s Eve

The festive season is a bittersweet one for people who are bereaved and it doesn’t end when Christmas Day is over. New Year’s Eve brings its own sadness.  People who’ve had some stresses talk about wanting a year to be behind then, as if those things happened because it was Year X.  But people who are grieving often feel the opposite – that each New Year lengthens the chasm of time between us and our loved ones.  The relentless cheer at New Year can be jarring too. I can understand it – the stress of organising Christmas is behind us and now we can have a no-strings-attached party. There’s a bank holiday in the morning, damn it, why would you not party? But being around such jollity seems to drive home our own sadness even more.  We seem so discordant in the midst of all the cheering and kissing, especially if we are at a celebration where our loved one should be but isn’t. And as for Auld Lang Syne, well, that song is sadness itself.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ lang syne!
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne!

Sometimes you are surrounded at that very moment by a group of people who you know with certainty have forgotten your ‘auld acquaintance.’  Do you need your faced rubbed in it? And maybe you remember singing that song with them in the past and feeling liked you’d always be together for every New Year’s Eve to come.

Then the New Year resolutions are difficult to listen to.  Don’t get me wrong, I applaud the impulse towards self-improvement and investing in your well-being. But when you are grieving, other people’s resolutions seem so fanciful and silly. “I’m going to run a marathon.” “I’m going to fit into those size 10 jeans again.”  “I’m going to save money and go on a cruise.” Lovely, I wish you all the very best with that. But we can’t resolve our way out of our sadness.  We can resolve to do things differently, yes.  We can resolve to take better care of ourselves. But this time next year, our loved ones will still be gone.

If this is your first New Year’s Eve without your loved one, my heart goes out to you. I don’t even remember mine but I have a lurking sense-memory that it was awful. I am going to contradict what I just said above and say you should make a resolution – resolve to be kinder to yourself and to acknowledge all you are doing to live your life.  Congratulate yourself for having got up and got dressed this morning. Give yourself a woot woot if you went to work. Give yourself a clap on the back if you ate a healthy meal.  Scrap that – any meal at all! The big life-changing moments are years away.  Today, focus on putting one leg in front of other and getting on with your day. You are doing the best you can do for where you are now.

Have a Healing New Year!