I Swear You Will Be Fine

    Day 381 – Harder

    Dear Josh,

    Days after you passed, Jess and I were desperately trying to figure out how we were going to cope. We asked various people how this grief thing worked. Some said we’ll be ok after 3 months. And we gullibly believed them. Perhaps it was a desperate attempt on both their part and ours to somehow help us survive. Some were more honest, saying the grief will never go away, because the love will never go away. I believed this more.

    There were many, many days when the weight of what had happened was just too much to bear. For me, reading books on grief and biographies from others who had lost a loved one to suicide helped the most.

    I recall both hearing from a friend as well as reading (I think in TCF), that the second year is harder than the first. This – I did not believe at all. I just could not comprehend that anyone could possibly feel worse than how we were feeling several months down the line. In reading, the rationale behind this was that the first year was dealing with the shock of it all. And the second year is the deep heaviness of the loss.

    As we were approaching NYE last year, at some point I said to Jess and Shalini, “why are we stressed about NYE? It’s not like anything is going to change”. But as the day came closer, that’s all we focused on. “We just need to get past NYE”. And how wrong we were. I think the day after was even worse than NYE itself. Perhaps because we had planned to keep busy on NYE and we were caught unaware that the next day could possibly be worse.

    And now, we are learning again. The first weeks of this year have been incredibly hard. It feels like life is just moving ahead for so many people. It annoys me. And then I need to remind myself that life is moving ahead for us as well. The days are heavier, the nights are worse. The reality that this is the rest of our lives often feels unsurvivable. And yet, we must find a way to go on. It just doesn’t stop.

    When I was driving to work yesterday, I was a bit too close to a car when changing lanes. In my defence, he saw me coming and only had to slow down a little. But he got angry and beeped his horn for a good 20 seconds. Jess said I should have beeped back. But I tried to explain to her that the car in front of me would think I was beeping at them. Then she said I should have put up the middle finger. Hmmm. I didn’t do that. I just muttered to myself, “moron”. And then teared a little. I wanted to yell out, “do you know what happened to us?”. And then I thought, maybe we don’t get that pass anymore. Does it expire after one year?

    Those close to us will tell us, it never expires. And I know, we can grieve for as long as we want, and whichever way we want to. I can hear you telling us this as well.

    Every time I cry, I hear your voice saying, “I’m so sorry Mum”. And then I feel bad. You’ve felt bad for too much of your life. I don’t want you to feel bad anymore. So I then try to stop crying.

    So this is how the second year has started. Not well. But how can it be well? We will do what we can to get by. Just like you spent so much of your life too.

    Love Mum

    Responses

    1. caitlynnegrace Avatar
      caitlynnegrace

      This is sadly familiar. The immediate years after year zero do not always get easier. This is what many do not understand. For them, the day of the death, the year of death – is the worst. In many ways, it certainly is. But “worst” comes in many shades. “Worst” takes time to reveal itself.

      The early years after loss can be tough in their own ways, made all that much harder as we increasingly internalise that our beloveds will never return in the way we know and which are familiar to us. That realisation alone is hell by itself. I recall one particular period, 11 years after my son had passed away. Driving to work, I had screamed and screamed in the car at God for taking away my own heart’s love and not returning him. 11 years and some people thought I was “over it” and back to my fun, clownish ways.

      Sometimes, going down the years, when I think back to the year I lost our son, I feel as if I was a braver person then than I am at present. To have endured so much then but to flail at the slightest contrary gust now tells me that there is much more about grief than we might realise. In grief, we are both the cut-up person that you were on your way to work that day as well as the onery 20-second horn-blasting specimen who might be enduring his own hidden losses. We are the strong souls that empty ourselves during the day for others but dread the nights when the tears just won’t stop. We are the ones who now watch others sail with gusto on the very seas we once did; we sail differently now, the old speed and drive perhaps gone. Ever so often, we stop to put down anchor, sometimes staying in place for days on end because grief has emptied us.

      But years and decades from now, when we look back at this time, we might be surprised to see how much ground was mystically covered when grief had tightly shrouded us. That’s how surprising grief can be.

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      1. Cheryl Glenn Avatar
        Cheryl Glenn

        Thank you again for taking the time to write this. I can’t imagine still feeling this way after 11 years. But, there is also a part of me that wants to feel the same way in 11 years. Thank you for imparting your experience with us. It really helps us. So sorry we are both grieving the losses of our sons.

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