Anniversaries, Birthdays, and Holidays Without Your Child: The First Three Years

Bereaved parent researchers describe what they call grief landmines — predictable calendar days that hit harder than the days around them. For an older parent who has lost an adult child, the landmines include the child's birthday, the death anniversary, Mother's Day or Father's Day, the child's wedding anniversary if married, Thanksgiving, Christmas or Hanukkah or other faith holidays, the new year, and the anniversary of the diagnosis if illness was involved. The first round through these days, in the first year of loss, is almost always the hardest. The second year is usually still very hard. The third year is usually the year where bereaved parents report the days becoming carriable instead of crushing.

No strategy makes a landmine day painless. The goal is to plan so that the day does not also hold avoidable surprises. A planned, gentle day with one comforting ritual and one trusted person is usually less brutal than a day spent alone trying to act normal.

Many older bereaved parents say the dread of an approaching anniversary is worse than the day itself. Counselors call this anticipatory grief. The wave of memories begins about two weeks before and peaks a few days before. Knowing this pattern makes the calendar less of a trap.

The first holiday season — usually Thanksgiving through New Year for many American families — is in a category of its own. The empty chair at the table is what bereaved parents talk about most in support groups every December. Some families set the place anyway with a candle. Some families change the location entirely, choosing a restaurant or a cruise or a relative's house in a different city. Some families cancel the gathering for one year and pick it back up the next. There is no right answer, only the answer that this family can carry this year.

Sources include Hospice Foundation of America, The Compassionate Friends Surviving Your Child's Death anthology, the Dougy Center's holiday tips for bereaved adults, the American Academy of Bereavement, and AARP's grief and holidays guide.