Growing impatient with grief

The days progress, each one bringing with it its own traumatic memories and a few sweet ones, as well as the challenges and opportunities of 2012. I slip (slither?) back and forth between past and present many times a day, sometimes not sure which one I'm experiencing. I spend several minutes at a time trying to unsnarl tangled images, sussing out the order of some events or who was with us or how Sandy moved from severe pain to feeling relatively okay and back again. My memories are snapshots, not moving pictures. Sure, I've captured a scene or two in motion, but what lies between them? 

Ah yes, healthy, strong, gorgeous.

It's not unusual, of course, to discard the memories of unremarkable moments in our lives. And it typically doesn't matter whether you did the laundry first or ran errands, for example. But it's maddening to me not to be able to account for all the minutes of the last days of Sandy's life. I can't change anything in them, but if I could relive them through memory. . . I don't know. Certainly, I'm better served in general by remembering her healthy and articulate and ambitious and strong. But right now, this month, it seems very important to remember the struggle, the grace with which she died, the powerful and the trivial moments we shared.

My grief has intensified the past few weeks, and it presents very differently from the grief of last August or November or this March. I really do seem to be switching back and forth between past and present. While I never forget that Sandy died, I sometimes forget that I'm grieving. I laugh as easily as I did a few years ago, before she was ill (and we laughed plenty when she was ill). I have enough energy for a challenging mountainous bike ride, playing tourist with a friend downtown, gardening, taking on new volunteer responsibilities, working. But even when I'm not keening or sobbing or sighing heavily, I'm remarkably less articulate than I expect to be, fumbling over sentences and struggling to find the words or even concepts I want. I don't feel particularly competent right now, and I hate that.

This part of the journey is important. Honoring what we went through a year ago, integrating the experience in a way I couldn't then, riding the waves of grief as they arrive — all esssential and expected. I'd even been looking forward to it in a way, hoping I'd feel more connected to Sandy and our life together again. But now that it's consumed me the past few weeks, I'm impatient.

I find myself looking forward to July 20, when I hope to cast this cloak of anniversary aside and regain a sense of mental clarity. I can't slip out of the task before then; neither my body nor my sense of loyalty to Sandy will allow it. But I'm like a kid who sees sunshine through a classroom window and squirms in her seat, wanting class to be over so she can be out in it.