The problem with your husband being the Christmas core of the family, is that when he dies, you inherit the Turkey Problem.
Bear with me. This – this – is a hard one to write.
Greg, my dearest husband, the love of my life, was the warmth of Christmas. It is – was – his annual campaign to wow me, and it worked – every single time.
I fell for him over Christmas dinner when I was a first-year economics student (I switched to Finance the following year, but that’s another story). He invited three women to his house – two pretty blondes with blue eyes … and me. And this early twentysomething young man cooked us a full Christmas Dinner. On his own. The full shebang: roast turkey, incredible roast potatoes, steamed vegetables, tasty gravy, the lot. I watched him manage that complicated dance of timing, temperature and basting, completely in command. And I thought: Crumbs, but this man has skills. By the end of that evening I was falling – hard. Not having that experience before, I had no clue. But he had already caught me. Fully.
Then he spent the next 32 years perfecting the Christmas Roast Dinner. Every Christmas his turkey roast gets better; more moist, more flavoursome. His roast potatoes with goose fat became legendary. The full works. He was showing me, every year, “I can still wow you”.
And I was. Every single time.
When he died in May, Christmas wasn’t even a thought – there was only deep grief; the vast, ruinous country of it.
Then, November arrived. Three weeks ago, I noticed the adverts started. Supermarket aisles suddenly polluted with baubles and chocolates and Christmas paraphernalia everywhere I looked. I tried to suppress it – looked away from the decorations. Avoided large turkey roasting trays like landmines. But suppression only made it worse – more nebulous, less manageable. The weight of pretending it wasn’t bearing down on me. Not really …
Until yesterday.
A dear, dear friend – the one who drove me to his workplace that day, who was there in those first impossible hours – gifted me a bauble. Bespoke. Double-sided. At its centre, a photograph of my darling Greg, a picture from our travels in Europe. He looks so handsome, so relaxed. So completely him.
And something shifted. I could commit to Christmas.
Not exactly to “joy”, per se. Not truly. Not also to celebration. This is too impossible at the moment. But instead, to doing – doing – Christmas. To the practical reality of it.
I asked our eldest to get the tree down from the attic for when she comes home next week. This was Greg’s task, always his job each time – now hers. The tree going up and being prepped is now later than our usual first weekend in December. But it’ll have to do this year.
I am even contemplating whether the budget may stretch to a smaller tree from the Christmas tree market somewhere nearby. I’m not tall, a small version will do, maybe. Though the living room needs rearranging and sorting first. These are the practical inheritances of widowhood: calculations that used to be automatic now require actual thought. Christmas budget. Tree height. Energy. What I can actually manage given all these perimeters.
So here I am in the supermarket aisles with a tight shopping list. Turkey (not fancying crowns, so maybe a small turkey? maybe pre-made?). Potatoes. Goose fat. Brussels sprouts. My heart is not in it. The grief is physical – it wrenches through the back of the sinuses and the throat, and the gut, and the heart. Horrifyingly, my face crumpled in the frozen food aisle. Ack. Stop. Keep breathing. Keep moving. A thousand tears over a shopping trolley. Where’s the ruddy tissue?
I had to leave. Eventually going online to click and collect from a local supermarket – it’s too late to book a delivery slot, even thouugh it’s only the first week of December. So I bought a pre-made turkey online. Because this is what resilience looks like. We cry. We buy a form of turkey. Both things are true, and both things just have to happen this year.
Our children are coming over this Christmas. the last time they were home for Christmas was in 2023. Last year Greg and I spent Christmas with just the two of us. For years we collect our turkey from our local Buckwells butchers. But since the girls weren’t home last year, there was no Turkey Roast last year. Though we did have goose fat roasted potatoes, and it was delicious. As ever.
And so our young adult children are arriving for Christmas. They’ve worked hard: university, early career, the struggles that come from building a life. They think clearly, plan strategically, know which battles are worth fighting. I am fiercely proud of them. Of what they’ve achieved (yes, those things were fought for, earned through real struggles). But more than that, proud of who they are. their capability. their balance. Their clear-headedness when facing obstacles. Touch wood, they’ve managed so far, navigating their own tailored challenges.
Our familial bonds are good and healthy, and strong. And though I would much like to have them home more, we are connected.
But – and this is a big thing – they are walking into something new this Christmastime. Home has fundamentally changed. The place that was always safe now has a gaping absence. Greg was always a warmth-bringer, the one who made it easy to just be. He helped me break the cycles from my own upbringing – controlling patterns, the hovering – and created an atmosphere where the children could become themselves without overt criticisms. He was co-architect of that safe space.
And now we are gathering without the core warmth. And the children, in their twenties, strong capable women, perhaps protecting me by not sharing their grief with me. But what happens if by being strong in their grief for me, they are all alone in theirs? The safe haven does exist but is everyone too busy being strong to actually use it? There is irony in this somewhere …
Can we bear up when he’s not here? Can we sit around the tree hung with their precious nursery decorations – tha handmade hangings from when they were little that I’ve put on display every year – and his handsome face looking out from that bespoke bauble, and not …crumble?
In truth, I don’t know what it will look like. But we will figure it out. Because that is what we’ll have to do. We are smart enough, strong enough, connected enough to walk together into these new territories and map it as we go.
Yes, our previous map of the world has been torn apart, ripped to shreds. These landscapes are unknown territory – not just for us as a smaller family unit, but also for everyone who has lost someone they love. There is no instruction manual. there is no right way through. Just the reality that staying still is no longer an option.
So. We keep moving. Even at a snail’s pace. Even when our hearts are crushed and broken and torn. Even when we crumple in supermarket aisles over the frozen turkey crown.
Perhaps this is what resilience look like. At least, for us. Not strength without tears. Not pushing through without breaking. But actual ugly crying AND ordering the turkey. About collapsing and getting up again. About acknowledging how impossibly hard this is, while still choosing to live life. Because, as I said before and will say again: our job whilst living is to live life, as best we can.
A very wise friend told me recently that we “Plan for the worst. Hope for the best”. I think Captain Picard might have said that too, sometime in ‘The Next Generation’. Move at your own pace. Figure it out as you go.
If you’re reading this and facing your first Christmas with your loss – or your second Christmas, or tenth, even – you’re not alone. Some of us are here, feeling all of it. The weight. the impossibility. the absurdity of trying to celebrate when your heart is in pieces.
If Christmas is difficult for you for any reason – grief, loneliness, estrangement, the sheer weight of expectations – please know you’re seen. There is no right way to do this. Only your way, at your pace, with whatever heart you can muster.
If you know someone who might need to read this, please share it.
To those who have kept us in mind, who have reached out, who have remembered – thank you. I may not respond to everyone, but I feel it. I appreciate it more than I can say.
Whatever your season looks like: Happy Holidays. Merry Christmas. Seasons’ Greetings. May you find gentleness in the hard bits.
And – oh, bugger – I’d forgotten the Christmas crackers …
Nusye
This essay documents grief as a lived bodily state and considers creative practice not as recovery or remedy, but as record: work made alongside life, under altered conditions.
When your husband was Christmas, you inherit the Turkey Problem. Navigating the first Christmas bereaved – the unfathomable grief, the planning, picking up broken pieces.
A reflective, research-informed exploration of how sudden bereavement reshapes the body, from immune vulnerability to hypervigilance — blending poetry, personal narrative and academic insight.
The body keeps the score. The mind ransacks the memories, grasping to stay among the living. The memories—if they’re of deep love and respect—offer tenderness, warmth. Pale though they are compared to the real thing, they just have to be enough. This is the grindstone of the bereaved.
How to Support Someone Grieving | Juggernaut and Friends | SouthSeaEyes, Printmaker | A Widow’s Reflection on Grief and Friendship.
“The spaces you’ve left are heavy with your memories.I lie here bereft, sutured with longings of you.I miss you” Poem accompaniment of “Grief I: Sutured With Longings Of You”, mixed
4 responses to “First Christmas”
Beautiful emotive words … so deeply sad 😔… But you are showing such resilience, bless you.
You’re amazing, my dear friend 🫶💞 xx
On multiple levels – thank you, dear friend 🖤
Oh my heart….. so many hugs to you ….
Thank you kindly, Ma’am 🖤 your words always uplift