The First Day of Christmas Solace: Touch

In the past week or so, my smaller circles of connections have seen a lot of loss. Some of the losses have been older people who were lingering for a long time before passing this week. Some deaths were more sudden with people dying of unexpected aneurysms or tragic accidents.

I decided just this morning after learning of yet another loss to start posting about ways to stay connected to our lost loved ones even as we live in the moment with the loved ones who are still here.

I'm offering it as a sort of antidote to the glitz that we sometimes feel pressured to feel around the Holy Days—the holidays.

I make no promises to be consistent. I also think some of my own strategies are best for those whose grief is older. Those with recent losses may need to just keep trying to take one breath after another and know that the waves of grief will get less tsunami-sized. That over time they will feel less like they will shatter into tiny pieces.

Look! It's so beautiful in the box! This is why I got tricked into starting it.

The First Day of Christmas Solace: Touch

For this I put together jigsaw puzzles. My dad did those for years and the rest of us would help. He taught me how to do this one giant puzzle at a time, mostly by example and occasionally with a scowl when I tried to cram together pieces that clearly did not fit.

Now I am able to remember him even as I wrestle with finding each piece. It takes up my dining table and we suspect the cats help me lose at least one piece for most of the 1000 piece puzzles I do. (Sorry, Dad. I know losing a piece is not protocol. Ever.)

Here is how to do a puzzle in the way that my dad taught me with a specific instructions for this Arboretum puzzle and its extra difficulty rating:

1. Separate out the edge pieces from the center pieces. Put the center pieces onto two cookie trays.

Feel close to your dad again. Remember that is was a problem to give up those cookies trays during the holidays.

2. See if you can also organize them into easy patterns or colors while you are at it. This won't be easy because you don't yet know the trees.

Feel close to your dad again.

3. Get excited about the Gingko tree because it's yellow and looks so obviously different. This will be a trick. The Gingko is the hardest one of all and you'll only finish that last and only then because you have come so blasted far that you can't quit.

Feel close to your dad again.

4. Think about quitting many times.

Feel close to your dad again. Remember that you never once saw him quit a puzzle. (He, of course, might not have started one like this.)

5. Enjoy the time you get to sit near your husband and your teenage son. Bother them about what they are watching while you are getting serotonin hits for each piece you do manage to find.

Feel close to your dad again. Remember how he used to bug you about watching Wonder Woman.

6. Wonder at the French terms for the trees but not enough to look them up in English.

Feel close to your dad again. Remember how he studied German instead of French just like you did.

7. Get frustrated with the Lebanese Cedar and organize all the pieces for that by shape. Realize part of your problem is that there are mostly two shapes. Call them "long and skinny" and "short and fat" in your mind as you organize them.

Feel close to your dad again. Remember his rule about not putting pieces in the center until you had matched them.

8. Finish after an unreasonable number of hours that you would not want to try to count. Let the completed puzzle sit on the table for a day or two and run your hand across it.

Feel so close to your dad that you can almost hear him tell you that you did good work. Even with that gosh-darned missing piece.