I’ve read many a blog entry over the last year or so and have always been amazed, scared and a little doubting of how long the grief lasts. I would think: how could the second year possibly be worse or as bad as the first? Well – now I am in my second year - I am at 1 year and 3 months and I still feel like shit. I still feel grief very deeply. It doesn’t limit my ability to function like it used to, nor do I lose control as waves knock me over, but it is still there every day. I still feel so raw and wounded. I still feel the weight of it. It is like I get up in the morning with this metal weight chained to my body. I drag the damn thing everywhere. Everything is effort. I tire easily. Some things are just too much effort, so I don’t do them. I lay down instead. It is all so much work. All the details, all the paper work. The endless cooking, eating, cleaning, bathing. It feels tedious and pointless.
Then there is the expectation to be “over it”. This comes from my friends, colleagues, and family and even from myself. Others don’t seem to understand that I am still struggling. That the pain is just beneath the surface. That joy is a lost quality. That the future is a huge unfathomable wasteland. That the present feels unmanageable.
I actually watched the news last Friday night. (I do have glimmerings of interest in the world. I do make an effort to ask others how they are doing.) In the news is the idea some guy calculated, that the world was going to end the next day. I was shocked at my internal first reaction: relief and gratitude. Oh my god…
Someone, please tell me that it gets better: that we find a reason to live and live fully.
It's getting pretty close to 3 years since Don's death. The past few months have beensomewhat less difficult - and I seem to be finding myself. I will say that I've had to push myself along for over two years, but the past 6 months or so, it hasn't been quite as hard. It does get less difficult, but its so incremental that it's almost impossible to otice until you stop and look at where you were a year, and then two years ago.
ReplyDeletejust found your blog and have to say that I am still raw and wounded and flayed wide open after losing my sister in july 08. I felt all the feelings you mentioned above; even my soul mate/sister from another mom said once at about 18 months out “you’ve already taken twice as long as everyone else” to grieve. I had to stop talking about Teri even to her. And, a couple weeks ago, our younger brother died of a massive MI and never came out of the coma. After a week on the vent, his widow was able to let him go--so here we are again. I found widows to be most compatible with the way I feel and think.
ReplyDeleteSo much of what you describe above also illustrates my experience.