On the Holidays … From Kimberly Archie’s ‘Faces of CTE’

The holidays are always tough for those of us who have lost loved ones too soon. With Thanksgiving and Christmas just around the corner, I find myself tearing up without notice, or a specific incidence. In the back of my mind constantly is how will I spend another year without my son Paul? Sleep doesn’t come easy, it’s hard to go to sleep or even stay asleep. The pressure of what to do for the holidays, who to spend it with and how will I get through all of those days; Thanksgiving, shopping for gifts, sending out holiday cards (okay, I was never very good at this task), Christmas work parties, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and New Years?

I really just want to work, help people, just skip it all and pretend tomorrow is January 2, 2018.

Life doesn’t work that way.

I also know I am not alone. While not everyone has lost their only son, or share all of the variables that sew into my quilt of grief, people who have lived a few years or more, have difficulties and situations that make up their own grief quilt. And if I have learned anything in the 3 plus years since Paul died, you can’t compare your grief to anyone else’s. It’s not a game. There is no score. There is no winner. No one gets the “my grief is bigger than yours” award. If a situation has occurred in one’s life that weighs on them and it’s categorized by them as grief, than it is what it is.

For my brain injury survivor friends who grieve who they once were, their grief counts too. It matters. It matters as much as my grief for my son’s death does. It all counts.

CONTINUED AThttp://www.facesofcte.com/blog/football/tackling-grief-chronicles-when-grief-tries-to-tackle-me-i-just-remember-why-we-started/