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Written by Travis Mayfield, filling in for Dave Ross this week on Seattle’s Morning News

It is December and holiday cheer is everywhere, but not for all of us.

On the outside, we are lighting lights and singing songs. Inside, many of us are hurting.

The woman whose beloved grandpa just died. The man who will celebrate for the first time ever without his dad. The family so joyful just days ago now broken after a child born still.

Death is casually everywhere in today’s world: “I’d die for that cupcake,” “I’d kill to get a promotion.”

We are really good at death, but we are terrible at what comes next for those left behind.

My friends at Seattle’s Healing Center like to say grief is universal, but we don’t talk about grief universally.

So we hide. We pretend. We get on with it. We try to take another helping of cheer. We have to, right? It’s what everyone else is doing too. And yet, deep down, what if they are hiding, pretending, and getting on with it in secret too?

What if, this season, we shared the cheer and the grief? What if that just became part of the tradition?

Who do you miss? Who do you grieve?

Promise me, you’ll say their names to one other person today and then ask them to name their own griefs in return.

I’ll even go first: Tommy, June, Berthiel, Sadie.

Now its your turn.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.