On December 21st, the winter solstice, 2006, stockings were hung by the chimney with the greatest of care. I decided during that first Christmas season without our darling baby boy to decorate the house as if it were his first Christmas in our new home, just as if he were here to celebrate with us. He died on February 20, 2006 of a rare brain tumor. His first Christmas, 2005, he was here, we were together, but he was dying. That first Christmas, we were beyond sadness, living moment to moment, caring for his every need, not knowing how long it would be until he took his last breath, but knowing he would not live to see his birthday in May.
I don’t know what made me want to go all out with
the decorations that year—I haven’t done it again since—but planning and
decorating the entire house was a good distraction. It was painful yes, but it
was also a creative act, which felt good. Making beauty where there was only
pain felt like a good use of my energy and time. I still avoided the regular
Christmas cheer though, I put the ornaments on the tree while watching Cujo and
had a huge breakdown crying fit when Tad, the little boy in the movie stops
breathing. I was crying and begging for him to live, terrified for his mother,
even though I’d seen it before and knew that, in the film version, he does in
fact, live. For the first time I could remember, I was exceedingly glad of
Hollywood’s insistence on a happy ending. I just couldn’t stand it if that
little fictional boy had died that day.
The last thing I did after finishing the tree and
hanging wreaths and placing candlesticks in windowsills and lighting lights was
the hanging of the stockings. Theo had a sweet felt stocking with a teddy bear
sewn onto it, made by his great grandmother, Jamie’s grandmother, before she
died. I hung Theo’s stocking last, next to our stockings, and then sat down to
admire the finished, newly decorated living room. I do love the glow of the
lights on the tree. In the silence, I gazed around the room. And in the
stillness, the thoughts, and the grief, as they always do, began to rise.
Looking at his stocking, hanging there, empty, flat,
with nothing in it, I thought of the coming Christmas morning and what it would
be like to see his stocking remain empty on that day. Thoughts of putting things
in the stocking and then opening it ourselves was heartbreakingly sad. Thoughts
of leaving it empty and knowing that emptiness would continue to stretch into
all future Christmases to come brought more waves of pain. Ten months into my
new life of grief, a bare drop into a lifetime to come of mourning my beloved son
in so many different ways, I thought I was rather used to the new and ever varied kinds of pain. Yet each time some fresh hell of a previously unimagined
hurt swept through my heart and mind it was a brand new surprise. The empty
stocking, hanging there, somehow full of every possible torture of all holidays
to come without our child, was an indescribably original kind of gut-wrenching.
Suddenly inspired, I jumped up, ran up the stairs
and sent off this quick email to friends and family:
“Sorry this is
kind of late--I just thought of it. We have a stocking hung for Theo (made by
his great-grandmother, Jamie's grandmother) with a pretty dragonfly pin on it.
I got really sad thinking that there will be nothing to put into his stocking
for Christmas. And all of a sudden I thought of something really nice that all
of you could do to help give Theo a present. And to help us feel a little
better on Christmas. Sometime between now and Christmas, do something nice for
someone, no matter how small or large, it doesn't have to involve money--just
commit a random act of kindness. When you do it, think of Theo and dedicate
that act to him and his sweet spirit.”
Now, 10 years later, the feelings surrounding Christmas are still very painful. Things are different, as things continue to be. It isn’t as important to me that people do things to help me feel better, or even that people other than us are thinking of Theo—though it is always a beautiful thing when I know that others are thinking of and remembering him. The acts of kindness are more about the pure acts themselves than about me or Jamie or even Theo. And this is really how Karma yoga, service to others, evolves over time. When we start out doing things for others, it is almost always self-motivated, and the more we persist, doing, loving, serving, the more it becomes simply about the works themselves. Serving others, releasing attachments to the outcome.
From the chapter on Karma yoga from my recent book Yoga for Grief and Loss:
Teachers instruct that in performing Karma
yoga we are to offer our actions to God, to the Universe, or to humanity. The
ultimate goal is to allow our work to be transformed into purely selfless
service to others. In grief, as in life, this is much easier said than done.
However, when actions come from a place of love, whether the act is selfless,
self-motivated, or driven by the desire for our beloveds to be remembered and
known, the love itself can direct the outcome. When love drives the action, our
personal motivation ceases to matter as much. Swami Vivekenanda taught in a
series of weekly lectures given freely in his New York apartment in 1896, “We
have to begin from the beginning, to take up works as they come to us and
slowly make ourselves more unselfish every day. We must do the work and find
out the motive, the power that prompts us; and, almost without exception, in
the first years we shall find that our motives are always selfish. But
gradually this selfishness will melt by persistence, till at last will come the
time when we shall be able to do really unselfish work.”
I know that all the acts of kindness performed by so
many who are remembering Theo, their own children and other loved ones who have
died, all come from a place of love, and when this is the case, that love is
directing the outcome.
Please feel free to take this idea and commit acts
of kindness in memory of your beloveds and in the name of love and service. In
doing this, we all get a little closer to perfect peace. Even for just a moment, which sometimes can last a lifetime.
I
continue to pray, as I did that December 21st, 2006, that all of us
will be struck by inspiration, that something will come to each of us, some
kindness that we can share of ourselves, to benefit someone else. And that
action will result in the fruits of love.
If you wish, email either of us your acts of kindness
and we will put them here in this space rather than in the physical space of
his stocking. Incidentally, we keep those slips of paper printed with the
original kindnesses in his stocking year after year and read them every
Christmas. Our family sends love and wishes of peace to all of you and yours
this season. You can also comment in the blog.
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