In many ways, I feel exactly as I did just weeks after losing my beautiful 7-year-old, Gwendolyn. The waves of grief still ebb and flow. Sometimes I am able to float along and sometimes I allow myself to drown for a little while. My throat still closes as it fills with the chalk of holding in tears at the times I don’t want to lose it. And I certainly don’t feel I’m healed or “over it.”
A year of grief seems significant, a milestone of sorts, though one I have never wanted. The days in a year seem to move so slowly when I’m counting the hours thinking of her, when I’m navigating the reverberations of deep grief and feeling consumed by how big it is. Still, the months always inch forward like the hands on a clock and I’ve learned to live in them in a variety of modes of being. Sometimes joyful, sometimes with clarity, sometimes in pain, sometimes merciful with myself, always with gratitude for having had her in my life – even if briefly. But, on the 25th of each month during this last year, time seemed to always pause to allow for mourning that another month had passed since I held my child. And then, as if abruptly, time reached to a year. And it felt so sudden, so unexpected, though all the while I was conscious of the dread and anxiety building as it crept closer.
There it was, staring back at me on the calendar, a year happened. And I survived. Numb on the actual angelversary day but, like so many days before, I felt the same patchwork of motley emotions. Nothing magical happened at the year marker. I haven’t overcome it or come out any side victorious. But as I reflect on the last year, I know I have changed. I have learned. I have continued living. And I am growing into my grief.
After a year of grief
The shock has settled and the reality that she and my life with her are gone has been absorbed into my skin, though not quite into my bones. I no longer wake up planning my day with her, checking off her school to-do list, convinced losing her was all a dream. Yet, some days I still check her room to be certain.
After a year of grief
I know solitude, allowing myself space to ponder, reflect, question, make sense of the magnitude of losing my child, is more healing than large company when I’m feeling overwhelmed. But I still need the reminders that I’m not alone. That others miss her, too. That she is remembered. That I am.
After a year of grief
I’ve learned to live in my new world without feeling completely foreign, while still acutely aware of the differences, still always noticing wheelchair ramps and accessibility issues, never giving too much weight to the simple life stressors, conscious of the gifts in so much of the typically unnoticed and mundane.
After a year of grief
I can see her photos without crumbling. I can go in her room without falling apart. Yet, I cannot bring myself to change her sheets, to change anything about her room, leaving it exactly as she left it. Dust has settled on the shoulders of the little dresses and bright shirts still hanging neatly in her closet, reminding me just how long a year is. And, how many hard things I have yet to tackle. Just how much grief work I still have ahead.
After a year of grief
I no longer cry every day, sometimes not even for several days, but that is when I have usually set aside dealing with the weight of grief, pushing it to the corner like food scraps, craving the need for a break. I veg out on mindless TV to numb the hurt or busy myself with life. But that can only last so long.
After a year of grief
I have learned ritualistic grieving helps me. Orchestrated opportunities to honor my child. Some of these are quite simple: draping my skin in Gwendolyn jewelry and clothing or drinking coffee out of the mug with her picture on it. I find peace in creating a shrine of flowers and mementos at her grave, cleaning her headstone, and pulling weeds. I’ve learned that on the big days (her birthday and angelversary) asking for help to honor her and doing something for others has given very difficult days purpose. But, I have yet to figure out how to incorporate her into the holidays in a way that I feel she isn’t being forgotten, yet that doesn’t feel contrived. Because doing nothing has felt awful.
After a year of grief
I still don’t believe time heals all wounds. Time eases the intensity of early mourning and after a year I’ve endured and survived what feels like the Great Wall of dreaded firsts without my child. But it wasn’t until six months in that I began to have flashbacks, that I had to start dealing with the trauma of years of living in survival mode. And I know new triggers will continue to surface, new aspects of grief will bubble up only once I’ve peeled back the first layers.
In the last year, I’ve immersed myself in the grief community, like I did with the SMA and rare disease communities when Gwendolyn was diagnosed. I have consumed the grief writings of others, participated in workshops, sought out grief therapy. And I have journaled my own process along the way.
This has all helped me. Helped me cope, feel less alone, anticipate triggers, and feel productive in handling grief. But, nothing takes the place of still having to trudge through the murkiness of my grief myself. Knowing it will cut sharply, often wanting to bury it down, but trudging, with heavy steps anyway. Because it will always be there.
In the weeks after losing Gwendolyn, I wrote that “I know grief. We are now old friends.” Instead of fighting against it, I conceded to grief a long time ago, allowing it to settle in as a permanent relationship in my life, but with the certainty that didn’t mean the future was bleak. For 7 years I lived within juxtaposition. It was a life filled with love and trauma, possibilities and limitations, that showed me contradictions can still create such beauty. I know that joy and sorrow can coexist. That bitter lingers within the sweet without reducing it, instead often highlighting its purity. That experience, even one which rocks our foundation, does not make life any less than.
I have accepted that losing a child is something one never gets over. That healing can take place but I will never be cured completely of the sadness. And that is okay. I have been changed at my core and that isn’t negative. In my own brokenness, I am softening to see with more empathy. To see that our vulnerability is our humanity. That grief is simply a part of life and nothing to be ashamed of.
After a year of grief
I am fully aware of my ineptitude, of the journey and work still ahead. That a year on a calendar doesn’t indicate I am or should be “better.” Of course, some days, when grief feels heaviest and complicated and suffocating, I wish I could shake it off and “move on.” But, I know, in the midst of pain, that this is sacred work and I can subsist in it. And, in acknowledging that grief is part of me now, that I know grief, that we are now old friends, the process of exploring my relationship with grief becomes healthy and transformative. I can sit a little more gently with myself and know that I am doing my best and this is exactly who I am meant to be at this moment. Scarred, bruised, broken and bandaged — but that isn’t the full story and it won’t be the end.
