When visiting my Chilean family, I have fewer obligations and can better manage my grief

La Junecita on Christmas — photo by author

In avoidance of the holidays, I fled the country. Instead of celebrating the holidays in our new home, we are spending it in Chile which is similar to the very first Christmas we spent after our daughter June passed away from neuroblastoma. That first year, I pleaded with my husband to agree to traveling 5,000 miles away from our home in Maine, so I could get a little reprieve. Magically, I did.

By fleeing this year, I don’t have to procure holiday cards or hoist a tree. Let’s be honest, holiday cards require more than a couple clicks on the iPhone. There is planning, outfits, haircuts, and styling which all feel necessary by today’s standards. I could have used an end of year photo wrap of the kids, although after losing our daughter, even that feels burdensome.

I didn’t decorate before we left the country and since we recently moved, I couldn’t tell you where the box of Christmas stuff landed. I don’t care, but then again, I do.

Inside of the box is a little ornament made of clay pressed with June’s hand print. There’s another ornament I made with a red ribbon inside of it that measured how long June was on her first Christmas. I remember laying her on the floor on her back and then rolling out the ribbon and snipping it just below her heel. Then, I coiled it and placed it inside a clear plastic globe. In black Sharpie, I wrote her name, the date, her height, and the year on the hard plastic ball.

At times since her death when I have been alone, I’ve carefully extracted the ribbon and laid it on the floor. It evokes the memory of the day we created the globe, as well as how long she once was. When I’ve sufficiently admired the ribbon and most of the height she attained in her life, cautiously I coil it and place it back in the globe. Then, I wrap it in red tissue paper and put it in the corner of the box where it lives. It’s one of the few things I have left of June. I treasure these ornaments, but when the holidays demand I put them on display, I cower.

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I don’t have to listen to endless Christmas music every time I step foot in the grocery store which is an added bonus. In Chile, it’s not a given that wherever you go Christmas music is being played. More often than not, instead, it’s Ozuna or Bmontee blaring over the speakers and I’m allowed to forget the holidays for a bit longer.

A shadow representation of where our daughter June would have stood between her two siblings in front of the Christmas tree is amplified during the holidays each year. In Chile, that gaping hole isn’t magnified. The house where I am staying doesn’t have a Christmas tree.

I don’t miss the old version of what the holidays signified to me. I’ll likely enjoy them again one day, and so far, I have enjoyed them here. In the backdrop of losing my child to cancer, however, the holidays are very different now.

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When I was fifteen years old, I studied abroad in Chile. I lived with a family who very quickly became the nuclear family I’d always dreamed of having.

Subsequently, they are also my children’s family. June never met them in the flesh, although she did travel to Chile inside of me when she was thirteen weeks. A meeting of ethereal grace as my host-sister Isabel cupped her hand over my lower abdomen and smiled. I never once considered that June wouldn’t one day board a plane in anticipation of meeting them all. I know better than most now, there are no givens in this life.

Our Chilean family boasts an additional five cousins, three aunts, and another set of grandparents, and great grandmother for my children. So many more people to love them. Oh, and love them, they do.

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Still, I am reminded of the holidays here in Chile. As we drive through downtown Quillota, strings of twinkling lights on tiny houses set behind fences lined with barbed wire remind me that I haven’t completely escaped my reality. Somewhere in the world it is cold and it is Christmas.

My second born died of a horrific disease at an unimaginable age and yet, I must still buy my living children gifts every year, wrap them, and pretend Santa exists.

I think of June as I scribble “From Santa” on each tag. What would she have wanted from Santa? I curse the universe, the world, our country, the food, the environment, the culture and myself for whatever it was that made June sick. There’s a pang of resentment brought on by the holidays. I despise feeling resentful.

Is this how it is all supposed to go after losing a child?

My children, ages six and two, deserve a “normal” Christmas. Whatever normal looks like 5,000 miles from home.

Then again, I’ve considered that creating a Merry Christmas might not be possible only two and a half years after losing June. How many passes does a bereaved mother get before it’s time to let go of the raw emptiness and hurt that accompanies creating joy for her living children?

It bodes the question, not just now in my grief journey but everyday, “What is expected of me today?” Expectations that come from within and from my children are what I am referring to. Society likely doesn’t understand the life of a bereaved mother, nor does it try to pretend it wants to. I’m not pretending it does. How could it? Society would have to lose a child to understand what we go through as mothers.

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Instead of searching for the answers, I retreat. To my room. To my computer. To the gym. To the plane that takes me far away. It comes with guilt. But as I watch my daughter, I imagine what it would have been like for me to run rampant through the lemon trees as a six year old on the dry terrains of Chile on Christmas Eve. I like to think it’s healing for not only me, but for her as well.

The greatest gift any one could give is love. So I give all the love I have to my children no matter where we are in the world. In turn, I give myself, the eternally bereaved mother, love with the added touch of patience. I let go of any guilt of how this should all unfold.

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My husband and I once sat in a child loss grief group every Wednesday for several months, six months after June died. There existed an ocean of pain between us that neither one of us could address alone.

One evening, the mediator asked us to close our eyes and allow ourselves to visualize a place that might bring us joy during the extremely challenging and enduring time that ensues after losing a child.

Without hesitation, I imagined I was walking the dirt driveway that lead to my parents’ house in Chile. The gigantic green leaves of the palm tree in front of their stucco porch blew in the warm breeze. Not a cloud in the sky could mask the delight that beamed from the sun at our reunion after June passed away.

I hadn’t seen my Chilean family since I was 13 weeks pregnant with June which meant it had been over two years since we were together. They had never met her. In those two short years, my idyllic life turned fraught with disease and anguish. My beautiful daughter had passed away. When I lost her, I lost myself too.

My husband and I sat on the oversized couch with our eyes closed in a room of other parents who also had lost their children. My husband's hand rested on my knee as tiny whimpers leaked from my lips. I wished so badly I could seal them shut.

“Who is there?” The mediator prompted.

I could see my Chilean family. In the center, my parents. Next to them, on both sides, my three sisters with their significant others and children. They held their arms out for me. My host-grandmother, Abuelita, tiny in stature, stood amongst the kids. I barely recognized her there at first, but then it was quite obvious. She, too, was reaching her arms out for me.

When I envisioned my bereaved self approaching my family who awaited me in front of the palm trees, I walked toward them bloated with the suffering and pain of having lost June. I carried so much extra weight in pain that I felt I might burst. When I did burst, what would come out? Surely, it would be tears. Specific tears my body had held onto for padding and protection. The only thing that ever made me feel better for many months, even years, was crying. It still does.

Inside my visualization, each person held me firmly, planting kisses on my cheeks. My sister Isabel and I hugged, sobbing together. The tears we cried glistened in the sun. Each way I turned I could see the remnants of pain expelled and I felt my own cheeks shimmering. As I released the pain, I began to shrink. When I opened my eyes, I felt a bit lighter, too. It was in that moment that I knew where it was I had to venture to next.

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Chile is my happy place. It’s the place I get to run away from the woes of my daily life, including the holidays.

This year, the moment I arrived the world around me and all of its prior engagements faded away. The worry and anxiety that often riddles me in my day to day life suddenly paused.

It’s my perfect escape.

When I planned this trip in May, selfishly I knew that I was taking my children away from our family in the United States. But because I am now peaceful, so are they.

A happy bereaved mother is a gift to her living children. At times this is an enormous feat to achieve. If I can give happiness to my children, then isn’t that the greatest Christmas gift?

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Our lives in Chile are simple. My children swim with their cousins in the pool in the late morning. They take mini trips down the dirt path to the trees brimming with peaches that have been warmed in the summer sun for a quick snack in between cannonballs into the pool. They trample through endless lemon trees in the afternoons while snagging each perfectly yellowed lemon that hangs low on the tree. My daughter has decided that a dress with pockets is the ideal choice of clothing for gathering the fruit. Thankfully, we packed two.

My favorite part of the day is sitting in the evening on Abuelita’s porch sipping tea and eating homemade bread with apricot marmalade while the kids kick a half-deflated soccer ball around in the dusty driveway at the foot of the mountains which lie just beyond the rose bushes.

I tear another piece of bread and lather it with ‘palta’ (avocado — a Chilean currency) and sit watching the setting sun as it dips behind the mountains. Some nights, when the air is still warm we linger to watch the moon rise. We share stories of one another’s lives. They listen to me talk about June. I fight back tears as my family holds my gaze. There is strength in the connection. Inevitably, we all cry.

“I wish I had known her,” Isabel says.

“You did.” The fact was we had spent hours on the phone video-chatting with Isabel while we were in the hospital. June knew her and knew her better than many people in my life.

“But really have known her,” she said. “La Junecita, tan hermosa.”

I wish everyone could have known June.

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Sometimes, and more regularly than one could imagine, the earth here shakes. An earthquake.

“Esta temblando,” my host-father says very calmly. He assures everyone they must stay calm. Depending where we are, sometimes we migrate to the doorframes of the house where it’s considered most safe.

Then for a several days, I remember the world beneath my feet. It is the same world I have tried so hard to forget since June’s death. One that has caused me great suffering. I’ve often loathed to be a part of it and begged the higher power to set me free. But when I am in Chile, the earth shakes and I remember how much bigger this life is than me. Than June’s death. That there exists something greater than us and we are a part of it.

The most recent earthquake made me realized how disconnected I have been from the ground beneath my feet.

We are what we believe we are and in this place, during the holidays, I am both content and terribly sad. I packed all of my problems neatly in my suitcase before I left and brought them to Chile. They are not gone. Although, I can leave them alone in the bedroom for a while. There is no harm in forgetting for a bit.

Spending time away from home, I miss June no more and no less, but during the holidays, I am not more tortured by the thought that she isn’t here. Don’t get me wrong, I am plenty tortured, just not impeded by it. I miss her immensely every second of every day.

Traveling this holiday has given me great reprieve from both my daily life and Christmas. I have temporarily changed my routine and pattern of living. In the face of grief, it helps. This year I am not filling my life with things that will break and grow boring. Instead, I have a little more space to remember what is important and what it feels like to breathe.

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