Anniversaries Are Like PMS...It's That Time of the Year For Me

So, the time that I dread the most all year long is finally upon me.

The anniversary.

Not just “the” anniversary. But also my wedding anniversary. Yup. We actually had my husband’s visitation on our 11th anniversary (2 days after he died). If that doesn’t make me sound like a bad country song, I don’t know what does.

As this day creeps closer and closer, I feel worse and worse. Experience has shown me that this is my lowest point and the actual day really isn’t so bad. It’s like I get all of my depression and sorrow out in about 1 week of weepy, exhausted, messy living and then I perk right back up again on the “big day.”

I’ve been thinking about the last few years and how some things have gotten harder and some things have gotten easier. I know that for a lot of people who are at the beginning of this journey, they get a little uneasy when the more seasoned grievers tell them that it doesn’t get any easier. My usual response to that is, “That’s not true! It gets easier! You’ll be okay.”

Because who wants to hear, when they have to truly concentrate in order to put one foot in front of the other and breathe at the same time…that it gets worse?

But today, I started thinking that the term “easy” is really relative. When I think about the first year…it was a blur. It was 365 days of anxiety attacks, shakiness, and sleepless nights. It involved days that I had to get up even when I would have rather been sharing a bed with a wild tiger if that meant I could just stay in it a little longer. It was a year of listening to bad advice and incorrect commiserating and squirming through more uncomfortable moments than I ever thought possible.

I dealt with the demons of remembering those days in the hospital, but at the time, it seemed like it had happened to someone else. If anyone asked me to tell them the story of how my husband died, sometimes I could spill it like it was a fictional story and then sometimes I would get midway through it and realize, “My God. That happened to me.”

It was…well…a bad year.

This was followed by year number 2. The anxiety had lessened a little. Getting out of bed was a bit easier. And I learned to flip people the finger behind my back as they told me I should get on with things.

I just got a lot of dirty looks from the people standing behind me in the line at Wal-Mart.

What I found the most disappointing about that year was that I didn’t have the magical moment that I was hoping for. Like a child who realizes that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, I discovered that there is no such thing as “getting over” what has happened. I didn’t wake up on the 366th day and feel any different than I did the day before.

Sorry y’all. But that’s the truth.

Now, year number 3. This is the year I have really felt the milestones. The first year, I knew they were there, but the pain was too fresh. The loss was too new to really know what my husband’s absence was going to mean for the rest of my life. The second year, I was too busy trying to find that mythical “new normal” I kept hearing everyone talk about and fighting to keep my head above water. Or just closer to the surface so I could gulp the air every once in awhile.

Year 3 was the first year that I really cried when my husband wasn’t here my son’s birthday…because it really hit me how much they were both missing. I suddenly realized that pretty soon I will have had the dog that we got together (our first kid) longer than we had been married. This is the year that I really felt the passage of time and how fast it goes. (Even with a willful but entertaining 4-year-old around. If you’re going to feel pity for me about anything check back with me in about 11 years and see how I’m doing. If I’m not around, I may have checked myself into assisted living early.)

My grief and my loss have become as a part of me as a vital organ. To lose them may mean losing some of what I have left of my husband and that would be a real loss. It’s not that I welcome depression and sorrow, but some days they remind me that he’s still with me. And if I want to keep the good memories…with that comes the pain of realizing that that’s just what they are. Memories.

I don’t know if this will make anyone who is new to this game feel any better, but I do think that the first year is the worst. The difference between the first year and the following years (in my experience) is that the blinding pain of loss isn’t always with you. As I said in a speech recently, “Even though your loved one may be the first person you think of every morning for the rest of your life, eventually this becomes more of a routine and less of a jolt.”

What makes some of us feel like sometimes the years after the first are worse is that when the pain does come, it’s sharper and more defined. For me, since it’s not the same pain that used to be my constant companion, when it happens, it takes my breath away. After a few years, we can pinpoint what’s happening, but we have learned through experience that there’s nothing we can do to stop it. And we have the added bonus of being far enough out, that people don’t understand why we’re still grieving.

But I’ll tell you something. Year 4 is the year I will forgive myself for it. Year 4 will be the year that I realize that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks…I loved my husband and I will grieve him however I need to for the rest of my life. I don’t care if it’s when I see a lifted Jeep (one of his great loves) riding down the road. I don’t care if I cry like a baby when his beloved Steelers win the Superbowl (and they will again, my friends). I don’t care if I get funny looks when I just tear up at a stoplight for no apparent reason (I do that a lot, by the way).

My grief is my own. It’s part of me now. And just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Kind of like love.


© Catherine Tidd 2010

Lost in the Widowhood

“I feel so lost.”

How many times have we felt that way? How many times have we heard that from other grievers? How many times have we just wanted to pull on a t-shirt that says it, so we just don’t have to explain anymore why we’re operating in such a daze?

We all go through these periods of feeling lost. Like we’re floating out there in the world with nothing to anchor us. We make the best effort we can to find that connection…the internet, support groups, counseling…something, anything to make us feel like we’re still part of the world.

For some of us, these periods last longer than for others. It’s discouraging and we feel like, when we see others who share a similar experience supposedly “getting on with it,” that we’re failing in some way. That we’re not living up to our grieving potential. That we’ll never get that promotion from “new widow” to “widow…once removed.”

But I have a different idea.

When we lose someone, our perspective changes. In a big way. The little things become just that…little (that is, until a little thing comes along and completely runs us off the road. That’s always fun). Our connection with the world and the people around us does a complete 180. Spiritually (not necessarily religiously) our connection deepens. We seek out those who feel the same awakening because that is who we suddenly feel a connection to. It’s baffling to many of us that who we find comfort in are not those people who have known us all of our lives, but complete strangers. When we see someone in pain, we can’t look at it in the same, detached way we could before. Because their pain was once our pain. And we feel it right to the core.

It’s frightening, this opening of the spirit. It leaves us vulnerable and insecure. And when we used to feel that way…scared and exposed…who did we turn to?

You guessed it. The person who’s not here anymore. Talk about your double-whammy.

Sometimes I think that the people who are having the hardest time, are sometimes doing the most soul-searching. We all feel loss very deeply, but I wonder if those people who can’t figure out what to do with certain areas of their lives – whether it’s professionally, romantically, or just what to wear in the morning – are actually taking the time to really figure themselves out. They’re not jumping into anything. Because jumping would imply that you have to land somewhere. And they’re just not ready to do that yet, damn it.

The problem is…everyone else around you is saying that you should be ready (mainly because the fact that you are still going through the grieving process makes them feel uncomfortable…it has nothing to do with you). They think you need to stop floating and join the real world once again. And it’s almost harder when you reach out to people who have shared a similar loss who seem to be “getting on with it” because in the back of your mind you think that you’re just not doing this right.

Sometimes I wonder if we are holding on so tightly to who we were, what we had, and what could have been…we focus all of our energy on that and let that take up so much space in our hearts that we don’t have room for the new person that’s waiting in the wings. It’s not denial…or if it is, it’s the sneakiest form. We know what’s happened. We are fully aware of what we have lost. What we don’t know is what happens next. And that’s when we start floating.

I feel like I’m making this sound more magical than it really is. This “evolution of spirit” doesn’t seem like it should come in the form of a ripped bathrobe and a bag of Oreos. When we wake up in the morning and feel like our entire body is made of lead, we don’t think, “Wow. I feel like crap this morning. I must really be doing some soul-searching.”

For me, I jumped into everything right after my husband died. It didn’t occur to me that I needed to figure out who I was, who I had evolved into, now that I was on my own. I wanted to get on with my life immediately. What I failed to recognize was that…my life was not the same anymore. That it was impossible to jump right back into my old life because my old life had taken a permanent vacation. The rules that I had followed before didn’t apply. This was a new game and in order to play it, I had to change. And change takes time.

And that’s really when I began to hurt.

I’ll never forget it. I was going about 100 miles an hour for 6 months after my husband died and then suddenly, I started to cry. And cry. And cry. I didn’t want to do anything. All of the decisions I had been so desperate to make a few months ago seemed as trivial as they were impossible. When I told my sister that I couldn’t figure out what in the hell was wrong with me she replied, “You’ve been moving too fast. And now you’re being forced to sit down and deal with what has happened.”

(Enter floating sensation and detachment.)

I guess my point is…when you’re feeling that lost feeling, try to look at it in a different way: That your damaged spirit is actually trying to take care of you while you figure out who you are. For some people this takes longer than others. For some, we’ll float back and forth between who we think we “should” be…and who we are actually evolving into. Because sometimes…that’s two different people.

And just remember…the reason we feel lost is because we’re hoping to be found.


© Catherine Tidd 2010

Widowhood: Only the Lonely

Loneliness is not a surprising by-product of widowhood. I mean, even for the people who have never been through it…it’s a no-brainer. But frankly, I think that “lonely” is not a strong enough word.

There is a deep silence that comes with losing your spouse. And it doesn’t matter if you’re standing in the middle of a crowded room…you will still notice it. It’s the quiet that comes when you don’t have that familiar voice, whispering in your ear at a wedding, “Can you believe she wore that? I mean, what was she thinking?” It’s the missing sound of two glasses clinking together on your anniversary. It’s the absence of someone breathing soundly next to you as you go to sleep at night.

Our friends are so good about trying to make sure that we know that we’re not alone. And we know we’re not friendless. We could call up any number of people if we just wanted to hang out. But we are alone. Our marriages were amputated in the prime of our lives and, for some of us, there is no prosthesis.

A lot of us, since our loss, have found comfort in chat rooms and support websites and that has helped relieve the discomfort of the amputation a little. It’s like taking two Motrin after extensive surgery. It eases the throbbing a bit, but when we look down, the limb is still missing.

We’ve found anonymous support from strangers who don’t know us but are as close as we can come to confiding in people who know exactly what we’ve been through. We tell these strangers some of the most intimate details of our lives, knowing that out of thousands of people one person might understand us and out of thousands of people, no one will be heartless to enough say, “You did what??? You’re crazy!”

Because, if nothing else, we all have crazy in common.

It’s an anonymous way to just let our widowed freakiness spread its' wings and fly. We get support from people who understand what REAL retail therapy is. People who get that a sleepless night with a newborn is one thing…a sleepless night with a dead spouse is a whole other deal. People who understand how guilt, anger, frustration, and sadness all come in a beautifully wrapped package with our names on it, signed “With Love, Widowhood.”

Finding these groups has buffered the fact that, with our spouses gone, most of us have lost the person we would have leaned on when the worst thing we could have possibly imagine happening...happened. It’s almost like we need to roll over in bed and say in utter disbelief to our spouses, “Did you hear that you died? And you were so young!” This would be followed, by a hug from them, a pat on the back, and the murmuring of some comforting words while we cried on their shoulder.

But when we roll over…well…our spouses already know that they died. It kind of spoils it a little.

I don’t think that most people who haven’t experienced loss truly understand that element of solitude. And that’s the very foundation of what makes us so lonely. The person who cared when something really great or really bad happened is missing. The person who was just as excited and saddened by the milestones of our kids is someplace else (I hope…I’ll leave that one up to you). The person who was just as invested in our lives and the decisions we made is now (again, hopefully) enjoying everlasting comfort while we slug it out down here on our own.

Do you remember the moment that you truly felt the change? (And for my handful of very brave male readers…don’t worry…I’m not about to talk about “The Change.”) I mean, the time when you realized that this was it? When you catapulted from married to involuntarily single?

For you, it may not have been a moment. But it was for me. I was leaving Wal-Mart (where so many of my breakdown moments occur) when I noticed that “Wild Hogs” was about to come out on DVD. Now, my husband and I had had many failed attempts to go see that movie in the theater, so when I saw that big billboard up at the store, I automatically got really excited. I thought to myself, “I can’t wait to get home and tell him it’s finally out!”

I think there was an audible “thud” as reality came crashing down on me standing next to the stale cookies that were on sale.

As most of us feel, I would give anything for just one more day, one more conversation with my husband. I’ve had dreams about it. Where we’re just lying in bed and I’m telling him all about what the kids are up to. We both know that he’s gone, but I’m filling him in anyway, like we’ve never missed a beat.

Those are the mornings I wake up and feel the most alone…the most like I’m missing that appendage. And even though there are so many people I could call who would commiserate with me, they’re just not in my head and in my heart living my life.

And does it make sense when I say…when I’m feeling this way…sometimes I just want to be left alone?

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© Catherine Tidd 2010