The First Holidays After a Death

Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26. If it's the first one without someone, you get to decide how much of it to do. Some people want to skip the holidays completely. Others change how they take part. Either is okay, and so is saying no to anything that doesn't feel right.^[1]

Most of what helps is deciding ahead. Here's what to decide, who to tell, and where to get help.

Kaiser Permanente's hospice grief booklet lists the decisions that come up. Make them now, on a calm day:^[1]

• Which invitations to accept and which to turn down
• Whether to cook or bake
• Whether to decorate
• Whether to keep the usual traditions, drop them this year, or start new ones
• Whether to visit the grave or the place the ashes are
• What's best for you, and if there are children, what's best for them

Whatever you choose can change. The booklet calls it a work in progress: try something, and if it doesn't help, try something else next time.^[1] A plan with an exit helps too. Drive yourself, so you can leave after dessert.

The people around you are guessing. Tell them what you're worried about and ask for what you need, in plain words.^[1] "I want to come, but I might leave early." "Please say his name. It's worse when nobody does." "I can't host this year. Can you?"

If you're the one hosting someone who's grieving, ask them directly what they'd like. Then do that, even if it isn't what you'd want.

Some families want the person in the day on purpose. The booklet's ideas are small and specific:^[1]

• Light a candle at home or at a place of worship
• Buy one decoration that's for them
• Give to a charity in their name
• Take flowers or something that meant something to them to the cemetery, or to where their ashes were scattered
• Cook their dish and share it with people who knew them
• Raise a glass to them

An empty chair is fine. So is moving the chairs around. Ask the people at the table which they'd rather have.

Call the hospice. Federal rules require every Medicare-certified hospice to make bereavement services available to the family for up to a year after the death.^[2] Ask what they offer. The holidays are a good reason to use it, and you don't need a crisis to ask.

Grief can come back harder around holidays and dates that mattered.^[1] The American Psychiatric Association says grief symptoms may rise at different points in time and usually don't need mental health treatment.^[3]

For some people it doesn't ease. The APA estimates that 4 to 15 percent of bereaved adults develop prolonged grief disorder: intense longing for the person or preoccupation with thoughts of them, with symptoms nearly every day for at least a month, that disrupts daily life.^[3] The diagnosis applies only after at least a year for adults and at least six months for children and teens, and treatments using cognitive behavioral therapy have been found to reduce symptoms.^[3]

If that sounds like you, or like someone you love, a doctor or a grief counselor is the right next call.