Holiday Expectations

It's a perfectly decorated home and you have perfected your holiday plans for your perfectly healthy family. Even in this unlikely scenario there is the unexpected. Uncle Joe arrives with an uninvited guest. Aunt Josephine forgets to turn on the stove for dinner, Nana gets lost on the highway and misses the event altogether. Every person has a story of an unexpected turn of events on the most perfectly planned gathering.

When you have a loved one struggling with loss; of health or mobility or ability, how do you adapt your plans? Can you expect something good, even joyous, or do you just shrug away the holiday and call it a wash? Three Christmases in a row I had a close family member in the hospital or recovering from a serious illness, or both. The following three suggestions culled from my own personal experience and my years working in long-term care helped me survive and thrive in a less than perfect holiday.

Adapt expectations;
but hold onto the most precious.

No, Mother is not going out Christmas shopping with you this year, but what can she do? Perhaps she can still brainstorm ideas, view items on-line, help wrap. If time spent together was the most precious part, find a way to still do it.

Adapt expectations and allow time to grieve.

Change is hard for everyone, but especially when that change involves loss. Give yourself and your loved one permission to weep, to be alone, to express sorrow even during the holiday. Allowing these times will make the smiling times more authentic.

Adapt expectations and create something new, maybe even better.

Sometimes having to slow down and do it differently means an opportunity to change a habit or tradition that wasn't serving us anyway. Maybe a desk-top tree and fresh greens will bring just as much if not more pleasure. What foods really mean celebration and which ones just tend to after-season guilty gut? Is there a food that could replace the sweets or fats currently off-diet. I have included clementines as our traditional holiday food which everyone can eat. Other changes have included more than average phone-calls and weekly letters which a care-giver reads. It is a small but meaningful way we celebrate.

Maybe you have already made these changes, share them if you can and I hope you can experience good, something joyous this holiday season.