Photo by L. Weikel

A Trick of Loss

As I mentioned in a recent post, there are a lot of people in my life who seem to be going through a lot of shit recently. This may be new shit, or it may be older shit they’ve been enduring for a while or what maybe feels like an eternity. And recently, when they thought their shit should be settling down or getting a little easier, they feel like they’ve received a fresh and quite unexpected dump to endure.

Sorry for the scatological references, but sometimes that’s just the way it feels. And sometimes it just feels like the best way to describe the stuff we see happening all around us.

So Much Resilience and Courage

I spent time, both in person and long distance, with a variety of people dear to me today. And all of these people are facing challenges that I dare say no one would electto experience. Yet each of them, while handling each unique challenge in its appropriately different manner, is nevertheless enduring, courageously prevailing, and manifesting resilience in ways that command admiration and honor.

One particular situation I am thinking about this evening is a friend’s marking of an anniversary – the anniversary of a sudden death. A life partner swept away without a goodbye. Without any cherished final moments. Just…gone.

The One Year Anniversary

I know my friend has been dreading the one year anniversary because, let’s face it: who among us who’ve lost anyone truly dear to us hasn’t marked not only the anniversary of our loss, but also the one day, one week, one month, two month, three month markers since that fateful rending of our normality?

But there’s something about ‘one year.’ It feels momentous. I think in some ways, we hope, deep down, that the pain will miraculously lessen. The trauma won’t feel quite so acute.

And in some ways that sort of happens. Kind of.

But what has come as an odd revelation to me is how the actual arrival of the anniversary day is anti-climactic. It is not that the pain is less acute. No, the anniversary is the anniversary. And it is virtually inevitable that you will relive almost minute-by-minute how that fateful day unfolded one year ago.

Surprise: It’s Anti-Climactic

But in truth, you’ve lived and relived and hashed and rehashed that day so many times already, that doing it yet again on the exact one year anniversary almost seems like eating a stale sandwich.

The reason this is so is because the really tricky, shitty part about grief is that it gets you when you’re not quite paying attention. It sneaks up on you and hits you when you’re driving down the road and you pass a cornfield where a sudden, unbidden memory of a joke you shared wallops you between the eyes. It sneaks up on you when you think about the way they looked at you the last time you saw them and casually gave them a kiss. Or the finger.

And those are the things that you feel are going to all rear their ugly heads en masse on ‘the day of the anniversary.’ But they don’t. Not really.

That’s because in the four or five or seven or ten days before the anniversary you’ve already relived those wrenching moments that caught you like a gut-punch at various times throughout the year.

Yeah, it’s the several days before the actual anniversary that are the shittiest. Not only because you’re reliving memories, unbidden and relentless, setting them up in anticipation of the parade of them to be experienced on The Day. But also because precious few others are aware you are going through your own private hell of anticipation.

Grief is a Trickster

And so we get to The Day. We slog through it. We do the stale sandwich reliving of each moment. And there’s almost a sense of disappointment when the pain isn’t quite so breathtaking. Did we do it wrong? Why wasn’t it a more perfectly exquisite grief?

Because grief is a trickster. It took its toll days earlier, weeks earlier. And it’ll whack us again. But never when we most expect it. And it will never feel quite the same. It shifts every time it strikes.

Tomorrow, the day after, will be different. Better in some ways; not so much in others. But the pressure of somehow making sacred that milestone will be relieved, and that, in itself, is the gift.

And even though I didn’t say it, I’ve been holding that space for my friend since the beginning of this month, knowing it was happening. Feeling it. Doing my best to hold the center.

I’m sure we’re all doing this for each other. I know I’m continuing to hold it for many. You know who you are (even if you don’t).

That’s what love is all about.

(T-1051)