Second Year Blues

     When the first anniversary of Bob's death arrived two weeks ago, I was busy with fun things in Santa Fe with friend Carol and grand daughter Hope.  That didn't mean I wasn't aware of the day's significance, but I was distracted.  However, once the day passed, Carol had flown home, and I was back to getting through the days, the reality settled in.

     It's been more than a year now since I've seen Bob's face and the twinkle in his eye when he smiled, more than a year since I heard his voice and laugh, felt his warm hug and loving kiss.  It's been a year of doing things related to living solo--changing names on accounts, canceling accounts, hiring a handyman once in a while.  The year has included three trips to be with family.  In this year, I have made three photo books, one for each grand child, to help them hold onto their memories of their Grandpa.  I have planned an open house to thank the friends, support group and health care staff who helped Bob and me through our last months.  I have also planned two memorials--one with my family in Illinois last summer and one for the day we buried his ashes just last month.  I have gone to yoga classes, to doctor's appointments, to school as a volunteer.  I have read books about grief and daily meditations, and numerous novels late into the night. I've enjoyed learning to play Mahjong with friends on an almost weekly basis.  I have been to support group meetings, joined a choir, and reached out to a new friend.  The year has been very full.  Somehow in all that, I guess I had started to think that at the end of the first year, things would "feel better" inside me.  

      But not only do I not feel better, these past two weeks, I've been feeling as if I've started the whole process over again.  Deep, painful grief has overwhelmed me, even immobilized me.  I've spent days wondering what to do with myself to get from breakfast to bedtime, and then congratulated myself when I managed to make it to the end of the day.  I've ached with loneliness deeper and more intense than I have ever felt before.  I've faced thoughts of my own aging and eventual death, and noted that numerous persons listed in obituaries are in my same decade.  Last night I even googled "second year of grieving" to see if others might have experienced this "back-sliding" that seems to have overtaken me.  Sure enough.  I'm not the first nor the only one to have found the second year at least as hard as the first.

     Perhaps the necessary busy-ness of the first year, combined with a certain degree of numbness, cushioned me from the full force of my loss.  Perhaps putting that year behind me heightens the sense of distance from Bob's presence in my life.  Perhaps the finality of burying his ashes brought my feelings of loss more to the surface again.  Perhaps there is no explanation at all, it's just the ongoing effect of losing my best friend and dearest love.  Perhaps.  What I know is that when the grief breaks through, as it has so often these two weeks, it feels as familiar and exhausting and painful as ever.  The "softening" of grief I've been told will come doesn't seem to have begun yet.  Similar to an old song bridge, "second verse same as the first," it still takes a lot of energy to grieve and a lot of energy to get through the days.