Inviting Grief to the Table

Someone clears their throat, and the forks pause over the plates. Maybe there's a grace or a toast, or maybe just someone saying, "Well, everything looks great." The gravy starts its way around the table, and nobody says the name everyone is thinking.

The holidays come with a lot of instructions for grief. Be over it, but not too fast. Remember them, but don't get consumed. Be grateful for what you have. And if you're feeling down, just remember how much they would have wanted you to be happy. So most of us do what we're told. We pass the potatoes and keep it to ourselves.

But look around the table this weekend.

There's the chair your mom used to fill. She spent all day making the turkey, two kinds of stuffing (one gluten free) and the gravy. There's the chair where your grandfather told jokes that made the whole room go quiet and then roar with laughter.

There's your aunt, who got laid off from her dream job in June and keeps saying she's "taking a break" without quite meeting anyone's eyes. Your cousin, who has stopped answering questions about when they're having kids, and who slips out of the room when your sister announces her pregnancy. Your niece, whose best friend stopped talking to her this fall. And your dad, sipping his whiskey, eyes filling when he sees your mom's apron tossed over a kitchen chair, quietly carrying his own fear about a call with the doctor he hasn't told anyone about.

And there's you, smiling past the chairs where your kids should be sitting. They're with their dad this year. You get them for Christmas.

Grief arrives with every guest at your table, each in its own way.

For some people at the table, the grief isn't only about who's missing. It's about what was never there. Maybe you invited your neighbour this year, not knowing the table they grew up at never felt safe. The holidays spent bracing for the yelling to start, reading the room, counting how many drinks someone had. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're going home this weekend to the same people, and part of you still hopes this year will be different. Or maybe you stopped going, and the quiet at your own table is a relief and a painful loss at the same time.

That longing can catch you in strange places. A grocery store flyer with a family laughing around a turkey. A friend saying how much they love going home. A movie where everyone hugs at the door.

And nobody says any of it. There's this idea that naming pain during the holidays somehow takes away from the joy. As if the person who's hurting is the problem. So we stay quiet. We stay quiet to protect someone: Grandma, the kids, the sibling who is barely holding it together. We stay quiet because we don't want to be too much. And a lot of families have someone whose unspoken job is to keep everyone okay. If that's you, you may have been carrying everyone else's grief for so long that you haven't had a minute with your own. So we talk about the golf score instead.

This year, I want to offer a different invitation. What if we let grief come to dinner?

We worry that if we name it, someone will cry. But often it's a relief when someone finally does. The more we let grief show up, the more we let people arrive with their bags packed full of it, the more connected we might be. So many of us are longing to be known just as we are. Breathing life into the grief we carry, and the grief others carry, might be one of the ways we get there.

Last year, our family celebrated one of my mom's favourite holidays a little early, to dodge flu season. My husband and I got to be holiday elves, decorating and scheming to bring as much joy as we could to the young, deeply loved children in our lives. Children who never got to meet their grandma on this planet, though I'm sure they touched base before they got here (my thoughts on the afterlife are probably good for a different letter). We decorated, we ate together, we played together, and we noticed the person who should have been there. Mom's absence was everywhere that day: tears in my dad's eyes, long hugs, throats tight with grief. And our family held both. None of this would have been possible without her, her love, her life still breathing in ours. We held the ache of her not being there and the tenderness of her love moving through all of us, connecting us in ways we don't have words for yet.

Inviting grief to the table doesn't mean making the whole meal about loss. It can be small. A few ways people make room:

• Set a place, or light a candle beside the turkey for the person who isn't here.
• Make their dish. Their stuffing, their pie, the recipe in their handwriting, even if it doesn't turn out quite right.
• Say their name. A toast, a story, a "remember when she…" that lets everyone laugh or cry, or both.
• Name the losses that aren't deaths. "This year's been a hard one" can be enough. You don't have to explain all of it. Or you can, and let people love you through a loss that hasn't been noticed.
• Notice who else at the table might be carrying something, and sit beside them for a while.
• Before dinner, tell one person what you might need: "If I step outside, I'm okay. I just need a minute."

If your table was never a safe one, inviting grief might look different. It might mean a smaller table, a quieter one, or a table full of the people you've chosen. Grief is welcome there too.

There's no right way to do any of this. Nobody gets to tell you how to grieve through the holidays, and you don't get to tell anyone else how to grieve either. If this weekend feels heavy, a few permissions:

• You can step outside for a few minutes of quiet.
• You can leave early, or skip it and make a quieter plan.
• You can say their name out loud, even if the room goes silent.
• You can feel grateful and sad in the same breath.
• You can hold it together all weekend and fall apart on Tuesday, when everything has gone back to normal and your grief is still there.

And gratitude? It's welcome. But gratitude doesn't have to come to the table if it means grief isn't welcome there. Gratitude that only works when you hide what hurts is just another way of staying quiet. When grief has a seat too, gratitude often gets more honest.

Early in my career, I came across Brené Brown's idea that we can't selectively numb our emotions. When we push away the sadness, the longing, the disbelief, we push away joy, excitement and belonging too. If we're only welcome at a table when we talk about gratitude, and our grief is told it doesn't belong, then we don't really belong at that table either. We are whole human beings, with the complexity and the capacity to hold both.

Maybe this year, when the forks pause, someone says the name. Maybe it's you, or maybe it's just a quiet "I miss her too" to the person beside you. Because the loneliest seat is at a table where we all pretend grief hasn't pulled up a chair.

This year, maybe we pull one out. Maybe we invite grief in as a guest, and honour the losses our people carry.

I'm Amie Nelson, MSW, RSW, a grief and trauma therapist in Calgary, offering sessions in person and online across Alberta, Ontario and Nova Scotia. If you'd like support, a free 20-minute consult is a gentle place to start: tworiverstherapy.ca. If you're in crisis, call or text 9-8-8.