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Grief Rituals Can Help on Valentine's Day (Or Any Special Day)

 
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Part of my mourning is not “hanging out" with memories of the last years of mother’s life as dementia wreaked havoc.  I am not ignoring the memories.  I am not afraid to go there.  I just don’t stay long if I am summoned by a particular painful memory. ~ Harold Ivan Smith, in Grieving the Death of a Mother 

We’ve barely made it through the holidays of December and January, and now the stores are filled with hearts and flowers and candy, all of it in celebration of the gift of love.

But February 14 can be a difficult day for those of us who are grieving, and for some it will be the first Valentine’s Day since our precious Valentine died. For us there is no celebration; there is only grief.

Sometimes, for fear of “letting go,” we may find ourselves “holding on” to our pain as a way of remembering those we love. Letting go of what used to be is not an act of disloyalty, and it does not mean forgetting our loved ones who have died. Letting go means leaving behind the sorrow and pain of grief and choosing to go on, taking with us only those memories and experiences that enhance our ability to grow and expand our capacity for happiness.

If our memories are painful and unpleasant, they can be hurtful and destructive. If they create longing and hold us to the past, they can interfere with our willingness to move forward in our grief journey. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can choose which parts of life we shared that we wish to keep and which parts we wish to leave behind. We can soothe our pain by thinking of happy as well as sad memories. The happiness we experienced with our loved ones belongs to us forever.

If we decide to do so, we can choose to embrace Valentine’s Day as a special day on which to commemorate our loved ones and to celebrate our love for them. Death ends a life, but it does not end the relationship we have with our loved ones who have died. The bonds of love are never severed by death, and the love we shared will never die either. For Valentine’s Day this year, we can find a way to honor our loved ones, to remember them and to show them that our love is eternal.

We can build a piece of “memory time” into that particular day, or we can pack the entire day with meaning. Think of it this way: It’s much easier to cope with memories we’ve chosen than to have them take us by surprise. Whether we are facing Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, an anniversary or birthday, or any other special day of our own choosing, we can immerse ourselves in the healing power of remembrance. We can go to a special place, read aloud, or listen to a favorite song. We can celebrate what once was and is no more.

Personal grief rituals are those loving activities that help us remember our loved ones, and give us a sense of connectedness, healing and peace. Creating and practicing personal grief rituals can also help us release painful situations and unpleasant memories, freeing us to make our memories a positive influence in our lives.

What follows are just a few examples of personal grief rituals. The ideas are as unique and as varied as the people who invented them. Think of ways that you can adapt them and make them your own. You are limited only by your own imagination.  
  • If you’re a writer, write – it could be an article, an anecdote, a story, a poem, a song, a letter, an obituary or a eulogy. If you don’t want to write for someone else, keep a private journal and write about your feelings as you journey through your grief.
  • Buy a very special candle, decorate it and light it in honor of your loved one. 
  • Purchase a book — perhaps a children’s book — on coping with the loss of a loved one, and donate it to your local library or school. Place a label inside the front cover inscribed “In memory of [your loved one's name].” 
  • Plant a tree, bush, shrub, garden or flower bed as a permanent growing memorial to your beloved. Mark the site with a memorial plaque, marker, bench or statue.
  • Write a special note, letter, poem, wish or prayer to your beloved, go outside, attach the paper to a balloon and let it go – or place it in a vessel and burn it, and watch the smoke rise heavenward. If you are harboring bad feelings or regrets, gather symbols to represent those hurtful or painful situations, events, or feelings from your past, place them in a container and hold a private burial or burning ceremony, saying goodbye and releasing them as you do so.
  • Ask relatives, friends, co-workers and neighbors to gather their contributions, and put together a scrapbook or box of memories containing mementos, letters and photographs of your loved one.
  • Celebrate the life of your loved one by continuing favorite traditions or eating favorite foods.
  • Select a Valentine card that you wish your beloved would have picked for you, and mail it to yourself.
  • Give yourself a gift from your loved one that you always wished he or she would have given you, and think of your beloved whenever you use it or wear it.
Your feedback is welcome ~ please leave a comment!
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For once I am grateful we never did anything for this holiday.  Get to glide thru this one and only have to deal with seeing couples, but been doing that just on a typical day when around people in general.  We bought each other little things as we saw them throughout the year.

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Tough for me every year, my sweetheart passed on Valentines Day!

This year will be extremely hard as I'm dealing with yet another loss... the woman I fell in Love with and have been with since Ruth passed, Brenda
abruptly ended our 6 year relationship via text message and has not spoke to me since Nov. 27th...(another post for that one)...she was my best friend prior to us falling in Love so I am totally "back to square one" it feels with this journey of grief...

The current loss has triggered "re-grief" at an incredible intensity, in fact it almost feels like Ruth just passed, I miss Ruth and Brenda both...it's quite bizarre indeed how I feel like I did in the early stages of my grief 7 year ago.

The positive thing is I have taken to writing a blog, and I have my own "personal roadmap" on how to manage, as I've kept a journal.

So yeah, Valentines Day will be a roller coaster indeed.

NATS

 

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Nats, I truly feel for you...But like a lot of us, My break up or Divorce type Grief did not compare to the passing of my Angela Grief. And any relationship in the future I have and it ends, no doubt, I can't see it comparing with the pain I'm still going through.....Now multiple Griefs, running concurrently may be too much for any of us to handle without good help........my Valentine Day  plan is to send Flowers to my Widowed Sister...I did the Grief Journal for a 180 plus days, and it did help...I even entered the Beers I drank......It is a Journey, we will succeed, albeit our scars and setbacks....good luck

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Fercryinoutloud!! Do you ever get broadsided in February, Autumn. You have my sympathies. My b'day is feb. 20th (i'm officially an old fart now-i'll be 68!) But we never made a big thing out of it. It was too close to our anniv.--March 7th (1975). So my b'day will come and go pretty uneventfully. But early march will be my tuff one. It woulda/shoulda been #42. Those big trigger dates are tuff. 

One foot in front of the other (even when I stumble)...

Darrel

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Autumn,

You're having a tougher month than all of us put together, undoubtedly!  I'm so sorry, I can only say I hope this month hurries by.

George and I always went to our church's annual valentine's dinner, I am skipping it, too hard, too many memories.  We were very romantic with each other and the absence of that is so resounding.

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Marty,

Thanks so much for the article.  This will be my third Valentine anniversary without Mark and it might be nice to have some fresh rituals to attempt. Autumn and Nats, I am so sorry for all you are enduring.  Valentine's Day has always been a very special time of year for me, and I have hope that one day it will be again.  Right now, it is a future thing; only really focusing on today and not allowing myself to anticipate too much the date that is coming up.  I remember when I chose Valentine's Day as our wedding day, how Mark just thought how hokey it was....but he learned to really appreciate the holiday and all it stands for.  Just keep writing; it really DOES help.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Another treasure from Megan Devine:

valentine’s day when you’re grieving

credit: Oscar E.It’s time for February’s made-up holiday.  Whether you celebrate or not, all that gushy pink love imagery is pretty inescapable. What happens to love on Valentine’s Day if the one you love is dead?

Though our anniversary lands on February 14th, Matt and I didn’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. For me, February 14th is a kids’ holiday. My mom loved any excuse to give us little presents, and Valentine’s Day was no exception. I associate it with childhood, not grown-up love. 

But since we’ve got this date assigned as special,  I’d personally like to claim February 14th not for romance, but for all love: to reach out and connect with that which we hold dear, across all the facets of our lives. To claim love wherever and whenever it can be found.

Love, not as solution, but as companion. 

In the early days of grief, there is only the roaring absence. It can be so hard to feel or find any love there at all. If someone outside your grief says, “oh, but they’re still here. They’re all around you,” well – I find that offensive, personally. Because while it may be true, an invisible partner, friend, sibling, parent, or child is not the same a living, breathing, physical one.

So we want to acknowledge that this hurts. That while there may be love, it has changed, and not in the ways we want. 

And. 

One of my teachers has a core practice of asking, in any difficulty, “is there love available here?” He doesn’t ask as an admonishment, but as a true question. Is there love available here?

I wonder if we can somehow find – access, lean on, wonder about – the love that might be available, even here. A kind of immense companionship with other grievers, with our friends or family, with the natural world, with a larger universe. 

Does love arrive, somehow, in some form? 

That’s where I find myself this Valentine’s Day: wondering about love. Wondering about the kind of fierce, immense love that companions us in our grief, without trying to take it away, nor fix what can’t be fixed. 

I think love is big enough for that. I think it will show up in as many forms as it possibly can. An immense companionship. 

My wish for you this week, as always, is that love makes itself known, no matter where you are. Not as solution, but as companion. Right alongside what hurts. 

PS: My new book, It’s OK That You’re Not OK, is available for pre-order. Get your copy here. 

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