No One Misses You Like I Do

The holidays are so tough for people wounded by loss. The newly bereaved especially. And old wounds resurface as well. Even ones we thought had long healed. And many people who look jolly and festive are really empty and sad inside. They just hide it well. And some cannot hide it at all. But boy, do they try.

Missing loved ones is so universal, and something we all share, yet we all feel so alone. Especially at the holidays. Even in a room full of people. Even surrounded by people who experienced the same loss.

I have known couples who have lost a child. Or siblings who had lost a sibling, a parent, a grandparent. A group of friends who lost one close member. And one would think they all feel the loss pretty much the same. Missing them terribly. Feeling a hole in their heart. But that is where we are wrong.

“How can he just go off and play golf and act like nothing is wrong? I can barely function.”

“My friends all act like like I should be fine by now. Don’t they see how destroyed I am?”

“My life has turned into before and after.”

“Can’t they see how much I miss him?”

I hear these things a lot because once people learn I work in hospice, they open up to me. Or they are family members of patients I once knew. They want to talk because they are exhausted holding everything in. Looking like they have it all together each day. Exhausted by a grief that has no real end. Exhausted from feeling very homesick for a life that was taken away. And they are exhausted by being mad at people. Yes, mad.

Mad? Why are they mad? They are mad because people do not miss the person they miss the way that they miss them. They many times want to shake people and say, can’t you see how awful I feel? Don’t you share my pain, my emptiness? I’m missing a huge part of who I am, who I was. Can’t you see this? Don’t you feel it too?

And the answer, quite honestly, is no.

And it’s hard to explain really.

I knew a woman once whose husband was suddenly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He declined so quickly that his family could barely comprehend what was going on. “Is he dying” they would ask me. Yes, I would tell them, he is. And he did die just two months after his diagnosis. The grief was palpable.

The family lived in a town close to me, so I would see the wife on occasion. She would tell me how much she missed Bob. How they always went to the grocery store every Wednesday and how he always liked to bag the groceries himself. Then they would go to their favorite diner for lunch. He knew everyone. And everyone loved him she would say. They knew us so well. And all of our friends. And our kids and grandchildren. How he adored them! But now, they don’t seem to miss him much. They just carry on like he was never here. Or like an afterthought. And this, she told me, made her very angry.

Loss is a very personal thing. Missing someone is such a lonely journey. A husband loses a wife, a child her mother, a sibling her beloved sister. But they don’t talk about it too much. The sister thinks the husband is an ingrate because he doesn’t “act sad enough” and “my sister deserved better.” The daughter looks out the window at her neighbor’s home and watches as the mom who came over every day with food for them and seemed so sad no longer even waves hello anymore. The husband stays quiet because his dying wife told him to “stay strong” and he doesn’t want to let her down. His daughter is too afraid to tell him how much she misses her mom because she wants to not make him feel bad anymore. But inside she’s mad. And the anger, the resentment and the loneliness builds. And so it goes.

It’s all so seemingly hard and complicated, and yet, it’s so simple too.

Just to say, no one will ever miss you the way I do. This is mine. And I miss you. So much.

I can remember one Christmas when I really just missed my mom and dad. I must have looked sad, because someone asked me what was wrong. I miss my mom and dad I said. Didn’t they die a long time ago? Yes, I said, they did. Oh, they said. And then they changed the subject.

I didn’t get mad or upset. But, like a silent prayer, I just said to myself, no one misses you the way I do. And that was enough for me. To allow myself the indulgence of feeling the longing for someone no longer here, but yet everywhere.

So this holiday season allow yourself to miss someone the way you choose. Or maybe this year you don’t miss them as much as last year. Don’t feel bad about that. It’s ok. And try not to feel anger toward people who don’t see your loss. They, perhaps, may be blinded by their own.

“How is it that, he’s always in my thoughts, even when I am not thinking.”

~ Sanober Khan

“Poets use countless words to describe their pain, but I only need three: I miss you.”

~ Angel Moreira

“The sound of your laughter is still echoing in the room of my memories.”

~ F.M. Sogamiah

“She missed the way he walked, the way he shoved his hands into his pockets when he was nervous, the way his dark hair fell into his mismatched eyes. The way a smile would flicker across his face before he committed to it, the way he looked at her like she was the only person in the world.”

~ Kate Lattey

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay