Shock: The Blurry Bits

It's normal, I suppose–all of the bits and pieces I can't remember.

Something will trigger a slice of a memory, but I can't find the pieces the go around that memory; I can't fill it in. I don't know if I want to. I don't know if I need to.

My head will get swimmy and full with the trying to remember if I push too hard.

I was playing a silly little game called Unblock that I play to help me get to sleep where you shuffle cars around to make way for your car to get out into traffic. I've played it countless times, but tonight the black cars reminded me of a funeral, which made me think of Bob's funeral, which made me think of how I got to the funeral, who drove me, what car I rode in, and who was with me in the car. I remember pieces, but I can't put it all together.

There are chunks of time I can replay so easily, but others that are just missing when I go to find them.

I have read and been told by many widows that year one wasn't the hardest year for them–it was year two when things really hit.

I don't know if harder is the right word, because this year is so much less of a roller-coaster than last year and, honestly, the time leading up to it. What I do know is that, so far, it's feels like the grieving process is different somehow–more solid, maybe? Deeper? More whole?

I finally have a pace to my life where I can experience the grief in a way that gets to my core. I don't think I could do that in the first year—I was in survival mode then. I had to make sure we "made it."

Now that I know we can survive, I feel safe enough to let go and feel all of these emotions that were buried. It's heavy sometimes. It is a frightening feeling being the only parent. Not a single parent. THE parent.

Now that I have a year of being THE parent, I am learning how to let myself be the grieving parent. I am learning that it is okay. I can do this. I've got this.

Comments

[Janet isserlis]

it becomes maybe part of us, Tanya Lewis wrote about PTSD and living beside it - not pretending that we get over something, necessarily ( grief , trauma) , but, as you suggest, we learn to carry on, carry it with/in ourselves

xo

[Dawn]

"I was in survival mode then. I had to make sure we "made it."" -

The year after my Dad died was so full of the details of after death and buffered by warm and fuzzy shock and the expected sucky of the "firsts". Year two was more breathless in it's moments that were painful.

xoxoxo