Listen, I get it. People we love die, sometimes in tragic ways. Many horrible things happen to people, some in childhood, and sometimes associated with holidays or other occasions. Yet, here we are still eating, breathing and living. We don’t want to forget them. We want to honor their memory, yet, the question might be, what are we focusing on with passion and intensity? Are we in today, or are we in the past? And what’s the cost of living in the pain and intensity of the past?
Many people experience intense feelings every year in or near the month that they lost a loved one. The more tragic or unexpected the loss, the deeper the feelings, and the longer this period can last annually or perennially. Fill in the blanks: “my __________ was killed by _____________ in the month of __________ so I always start to get __________ as we get closer to that month.”
That’s what I call celebrating a traumaversary. Don’t get me wrong, I respect rituals such as the Jewish tradition of Yahrzeit (Yiddish for “year time”) in which a candle is lit and a service may be performed every year on the date that someone died. I think this tradition is sweet and a good way to honor someone and reflect on what they meant to us. Other cultures may observe the day of a loved one’s death in some way too.
But such traditions, whether private or public, are about the person we loved, not the traumatic event associated with the death of the person we loved. Those are two different things. And it can be important that we see the difference.
Healer and author Caroline Myss is one of many who is all about forgiveness, particularly if we suffer from health challenges. She says many of us store traumatic events in our bodies and whether we’re angry at a drunk driver, a drug dealer, someone who decided to end their own life, or ourselves for not saying goodbye, or whatever we associate with the traumatic experience, it does not serve us to spend weeks every year returning to these painful feelings and memories and ruminating on them. Often, only by forgiving the people involved and the experience itself can we free our bodies from the long-term effects of focusing on, and in some weird way, celebrating, the trauma.
I know whereof I speak. In my time, I have lost a baby brother, our young father, and our young uncle, this last to suicide. All of these experiences affected me and shaped the people around me, hence my life. Yet, while I certainly know the day our father died (we’re coming up on it, because it was March 4, 1987, an Ash Wednesday that year), I don’t focus on it. Because I’ve chosen freedom from addiction and gratitude for the present moment, I don’t choose to celebrate that traumaversery. I don’t get depressed as February gets closer to March. And I don’t let March bleed into April.
In our case, my brothers and I choose to celebrate the life, rather than death of our beloved father, Nick, by organizing an outing for the three of us every year around the time of his birthday. As a nation, we celebrate the births of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, not the dates of their assassinations.
My freedom from living in traumaversy didn’t come automatically, it took reflection, and a conscious decision to let go of the anger and regret of the past, and to forgive myself (for not saying “I love you” when we spoke on the phone the day before his heart attack) and to forgive others for having the audacity to live when he died.
[These days, I post first on my Substack newsletter, which, in addition to this post, has reflection questions, a tool of the week, and the latest events. To subscribe to that newsletter, go to the bottom of the home page at https://sarastevensnichols.com/ or find me on Substack at https://substack.com/@sarastevensnichols]
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