Last year, I relived those weeks, experiencing them bodily. I expressed the emotions I'd been unable to give life the first time around, when I needed to be attentive and focused, and when I was reassured -- able to ignore reality for a moment -- by Sandy's presence and Sandyness. Last summer, those five weeks were hard.
I didn't know what to expect this year, but I kept my calendar open. I gave myself permission to focus on the past or to stay in the present, to sit and stare at a wall when it seemed like what I needed to do or to be active and engaged when that felt appropriate. It's been bumpy, and I'm clearly still working through the backlog of emotional response from 2011. But I didn't relive the events in the same way.
Instead, I tracked those events subconsciously, and sometimes consciously: I always knew what had happened. I always knew what day of the week it was. That is, I knew what day of the week it had been in 2011, and so I've been confused about what day it is in 2013 for much of July. In many ways, it's been hard, and I've been rocky emotionally, sometimes inexplicably irritable and other times despairing. I've keened and I've moaned with pain. But not nearly like last year.
Last year, too, I expected a revelation to come with the anniversary of her death. Given how much most grief resources and even people's stories always seem to talk about the first year, I thought I might have a sort of graduation from grief. (And surely I deserved honors, simply for surviving.) There was no such moment.
This year, though, was different. Last night, as I felt the hours passing, growing closer to the two-year mark, I was restless. I wanted to do some kind of ritual, something meaningful. But I didn't know what it should be, and I also, contrarily, didn't want to focus on her dying. I was ready to return to gratitude for her life. I talked to her, sobbed, felt sorry for myself, opened the blue bottle and stared at the bright white of her ashes, ached some more, and then read the book I'm in the middle of. (I'm reading Salt, Sugar, Fat - not exactly an obvious choice for death's anniversary, but well-written and engaging and important.) I turned out the light at midnight, an hour and 20 minutes before she died. I was asleep at the moment of death. That is, I was asleep at the moment that was exactly two years after the moment she died. When I woke briefly at 3:30 a.m., I looked at the clock and thought, "oh good, she's dead."
It's a weird thing to think "oh good, she's dead." Because of course it's not what I meant at all. I wasn't happy that she was dead. I was relieved that the countdown was over, that I no longer had to worry about whether I was honoring her appropriately with a ritual, that I could focus on something other than my grief.
This morning, I woke thick-headed and lay in bed gradually awakening. As I snuggled with the cats, I looked at one of the bookcases in the room and thought, as I have hundreds of times, that I'd like to catalog the 3000 or so books that are in this house. What was significant was that I specifically thought, half-awake, lying there, "I really want to catalog my books." My books. Not our books. I bought many of them; Sandy bought many; some we bought together. And even though they all became legally mine when she died, I haven't ever been able to bring myself to think of them all as mine. But now, apparently, something shifted. (It didn't come naturally enough that I didn't notice the pronoun, however.)
I lay in bed testing the personal pronoun, reciting "my books, my bedroom, my house, my garden, my neighborhood, my cats, my kitchen, my washing machine, my yoga studio, my shower, my office, my friends, my life." I laughed at the last three, which were the ones that came most easily. It's always been my office, and while we often spoke of our friends, I've talked about my friends frequently. Same with my life. So they felt like the ones that didn't quite belong in the list, but also like role models for eventually feeling okay about sole ownership of all of the others.
Yesterday was an odd and sometimes challenging day emotionally. But today has been surprisingly good. I found my relief and higher energy levels curious until I realized that I'm no longer diverting my energy into tracking the past. In 2011, my senses were heightened during the weeks that Sandy was dying. I was very focused on her and on the present and on holding on to our time together. It makes sense to me that those moments were burned into my psyche. But after she died, my senses were numbed. The pain was excruciating as it was, and if I'd been focused on the present so relentlessly, I don't think I'd have survived the experience. I have a vague sense of what happened in the week that followed Sandy's death, and I continue to be grateful for the generosity and care of good friends who ensured that I had the space and safety to grieve fully. But I don't have any psychological compulsion to track those days or events. They're part of the faux life, which is how I think of the past two years. So my energy is freed. My brain feels clearer, too.
I have been looking to the future today, and bouncing around in the present. Gardening, walking happily to the library, chatting with neighbors, talking to friends, open to possibilities for the ways I might spend the rest of my life. It's refreshing. I've shed tears a few times, but then, before the five-week period started, I was still crying a couple of times a day, missing Sandy, mourning the years we were denied. I don't expect the grief to vanish, and I wouldn't want it to. But it's back to a more integrated part of my life -- and this energizing relief is a nice surprise.
I haven't checked in with Sandy's close friends or family today, so I don't know how everyone else is doing. Whereas the 18th is the difficult day for me because my perception was that she died the night of the 18th, I know that for many people today is the harder day, because they learned of her death in the morning. I hope this year is a little easier for everyone, and that those who've been experiencing a countdown (and I know there are at least a few) can also appreciate
a sense of relief now.
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