Dear Vicki,
I am sorry about your son passing so young...my brother died at age 34 so about the same age. I agree with a lot that has been said...let the tears fall...i carried a towel around because i cried so much when i did finally grieve him. My mother acted a lot like how you sound...his children learned to not speak about their father around my mother, their grandmother, because how she react..tears or anger. If people tried to express sympathy she stop them angrily and just walk away.
She went on like that for number of years also...and I know how much it hurt us siblings plus his children that she did not appreciate us that were alive! That is how it felt to us...especially since his death hurt all of us greatly. His children were only 3 and 5 and all they understood was that their father was gone..and often they ask me if it was because of them? Like they had done something to push him away. Broke my heart...but was so glad i could be there for them! I talk about him all the time to try and keep him real...plus he made me promise to make sure they got the same joy as kids that he and i shared in together. I use to tell him i do it with you alive..so hang in..but eventually, i think he just got too tired and in too much pain.
So by the grief of his children and even his wife, my siblings,friends who also lost children and even myself, i came to realize that grief is grief if the person who died meant something great to you. Yes, i do believe in my experiences that like when my grandparents died at 90 plus..it was easier since they had full life. But than compared to a friend who's child died at age 4, so did my brother by that standard have full life...so that is why, i do not say one can measure grief or the pain of it. Who are we to know how much another grieves. I greatly grieved my brother...and anyone that really knew us....would cry as soon as they saw me since they knew how close we were and so often together in our lives.
If the holidays are still hard..you do not need do anything. Ask your daughter to have it at her house and let her do the cooking etc this year. BUT, with a promise to her that this year you will go get grief counseling so you can again have one day with out pain but even more importantly you will be able to share in the joys and magical time the holidays can be for your daughter and her family! What better present could you give her and what better way to keep the memory of your son alive! Especially since he loved it so!
My mom did eventually went to counseling than to volunteer at hospice. She realized that lost of child happens way more often than many think...I myself also noticed that after my brother died...weekly i read of someone dying way to young. So it is really more 'normal' than we want to believe. Kind of like having good health...and here see how many who do not! Yet many people do...more than do not actually. So hopefully, with some grief counseling and really letting it all out, by next holiday season...you will want to celebrate in a way fitting to the memory of your son and for your daughter's life!
If he was married...here is how we worked it out. My sister in law spent Thanksgiving with her family and Christmas Eve with them or just her parents. Christmas day was with our family and it is still done that way to this day...some 30 years later...and yes we all still miss him and all the people we love who are not at the table to share in our dinner..so we do a toast to them! One year...after my mother was better..i got my parents to dig up some slides of my brother over his lifetime since his younger daughter really did not know him...and she really looked like and acted like him. Which she get mad at if we said that...she wanted to be her own person...she had no idea how well loved or funny her dad was till she saw it in those slides, herself! He finally became real to her! Not just some barely faint memory!
I hope your son had a good life up until he passed. My brother thought he never marry. Having kids was beyond what he hoped for since he felt no one would want some one as sick as he and he always felt he did not have long in this world.
So i have often told his wife how thankful i am she married him..and gave him children that he had more than he had hoped for in his lifetime thanks to her! So hopefully, you be able to talk about the happy times like my mother finally could and does now. It hurt me so much when she would not let us speak of him..i wanted to keep him alive and this may be true for your daughter, his father and all his friends. So i hope you get some help...if not for you but for him and for your daughter. I know you can do this...and you will be so much happier yourself as your son would want!