Well, Of Course. It's Tuesday.

     Today, during yoga class, I had an "aha" moment.  It had been a sad morning, one in which I cried a bit while trying to get ready and even while eating breakfast.  There were no particular thoughts or events that precipitated the tears, and I pushed myself to go to class because I always feel good afterward.  So there I was, balancing in "tree pose" while my mind asked, "what is it about Tuesdays, anyway?"  And without any hesitation at all, my mind answered itself, "Bob died on a Tuesday."

     Standing there in that balance pose, I encountered the reason for my sense of imbalance today. It was a first-hand experience of what I have read--that, in grief, it is possible to be affected by an anniversary, or other reminder of our loss, even when we aren't conscious of it.  Thanks to this insight, maybe I'll be a bit more prepared when Tuesday rolls around next week. 

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.  

The One-Year Mark

     Today, two days after the first anniversary of Bob's death, I happened upon this quote I copied from a novel I was reading last March:
   
                                 "It's easy to believe for several months 
                                  that someone who died is just out of town.
                                  But the one-year mark brings certainty."

That captures so well how I've been feeling this week, beginning with our tender ceremony of remembrance and scattering of ashes last Saturday.  It's as if a blanket of reality has been laid over my heart, sort of like the rose petals we laid over the burial site.  The truth is settling in.

One Year Ago

 One year ago tonight, 

Bob and I said our last "goodnight."  

We didn't know it at the time, 

though I realized our days together were limited.  

The next day, we said our last "goodbye."  

It seems like yesterday.

The calendar disagrees.

Forever Ours

     And so we did it.  We buried Bob's ashes.  Our daughter, two grand-kids, and five dear friends gathered in our living room last Saturday.  We sang songs.  We shared memories, readings and laughter.  Then we gathered at the site that had been prepared to receive Bob's ashes and we raked them into the already loosened soil.  We scattered rose petals over the site--where we'll also plant a crab apple tree in November, sometime around Bob's birthday.  And then we all returned home to share a meal.

     It was beautiful, tender, touching, deeply emotional and very spiritual.  It was all I'd hoped it might be.  Yet when it was all over, I felt the reality more deeply than ever:  Bob is really gone.  Until last Saturday, his ashes sat on the dresser in my room.  I paid little attention to them, but I knew they were there.  I also knew, and still know, that those ashes are not Bob.  But somehow, they became what they truly are--the precious, sacred last physical remnants of the man I love.  After our ceremony of celebration and remembrance of his life, after carrying home the empty urn, I felt more deeply the stark truth of his absence.  

     Which is why I find comfort now in words from a poem I asked a friend to read at the burial site:

                                     What I know is that

                                     The song once sung cannot be unsung,

                                     And the life once lived cannot be unlived,

                                     And the love once loved cannot be unloved.

Bob's physical presence is no more, but his song, his life, and his love are with me--and with all of us he loved--forever.

               

One of Those Days

     Sometimes it's a relief to have a day when I have nowhere I have to be, nothing I have to do.  Then I know that if my grief breaks through and slides down my cheeks, I don't need to cut it short and pull myself together; I can just let it be.  Today is looking like it may be one of those uncommitted days.  And it's as if the grief knows I'm free to let it out because it keeps washing over me--and it's only 9:00 AM!

     On days like this, I try to just "let it be" and not squelch my heart with thoughts like "Still?"  or "When is this going to be over?"  Somewhere along the line of my life, I must have absorbed the cultural taboos that set limits on grieving because even though I believe it's normal and healthy, I face those internal judgments from time to time.  

     Another hurdle in the process is how much energy grieving takes.  Letting the tears flow, especially if they come from deep within, can be exhausting.  And if it happens several times in a day?  Well, not much else gets done that day!

      Whether grief comes on a day that is busy or on one that stretches out ahead of me in unclaimed hours, it helps to remember these words from the writings of a grief counselor I've been reading this year:

     "It's hard to understand until we ourselves experience our first Great Grief, but grief takes 

time.  It takes a LOT of time.  It consumes whole chunks of our days and weeks.  And as time 

spools forward, it takes months and years for us to express, accommodate, and learn to live with.

     But let's remind ourselves that grieving and mourning are two of the most meaningful 

ways we can spend our time....Like its counterpart, love, grief requires time to dream, remember, reach for the infinite, and simply be.  So let's not feel bad or guilty when grief consumes our days."

"Grief spikes are normal.  Sometimes you can identify the trigger--a song, aroma, place etc.

 Other times, there seems to be no immediate cause at all.  Grief spikes don't need a trigger.  

 The grief resides in your heart, and is finding its way out, bit-by-bit....Every grief spike says, 

 'I loved you.  I love you still.'  The scar is a gift--a reminder of the blessing you had."

      

At Nine Months, A Vision

     Nine months ago today we were keeping vigil with Bob as he lay dying. (It was also a Tuesday.)  By late afternoon, the vigil was over.  Bob had taken his last breath and I was left to go on without him.
     Last night as I was coming down Llama Road, finishing my walk, I "saw Bob."  He was about a third of a mile ahead of me, striding along Millicent Rogers Road.  My head knew the man I was watching walk away from me was not Bob, but my eyes and my heart saw Bob anyway.  He was wearing his tan hat--the one he always called his "pork pie"--and his tan long-sleeve polo shirt.  The sight of him caught at my heart.  I froze in my tracks and stood watching "Bob" grow smaller and smaller as he continued walking north, away from me.  And then I cried.  I just cried.