How am I doing now?

. . . 1,441 days since you left.

As I move into my fourth year of life without Dan, I wonder . . . how am I doing now?

Although Kubler-Ross intended the stages of grief to describe someone facing a terminal diagnosis, her steps are commonly used as a mile marker for those left behind.

 

 

I remember that first year of shock.

 

When someone dies of illness, it is a different kind of shock than when someone is taken suddenly through a crash or a sporting accident. Words like “easier” do not apply in these equally life-changing happenings. Distinctions apply, of course, but the result is the same.

Our person is gone.

For me, the shock arrived like a fog of disbelief beneath the surface. An unconscious feeling that pervaded my reality—not fully recognized until I saw it from the vantage point of year two.

 

 

And denial?

 

Denial still surprises me at times. It happened strongly in a dream that his absence felt so real that I blamed myself.

How did I get so disconnected from him? I asked.

Where is he? I demanded.

When I awoke, weeping, I learned that my body knows denial more keenly than my conscious mind. A part of me may never fully reconcile the reality of his absence.

 

This week I notice that anger is present less than it was in the beginning.

 

In the beginning, anger was a low level panic beneath the surface of everyday comings and goings. I found it was disconnected in the way that anger surprises those of us who are easy-going souls most of the time. If I felt threatened by anything at all—disappointment, failure, or fear of future—anger filled my being. It arrived like a stranger.

What are YOU doing here? I asked.

For me, the surprise of its arrival was as shocking as the strength of it.

Who am I now?

Will this always be the new me?

 

 

Bargaining eludes me — even after thousands of days without him.

 

I don’t recognize it.

I don’t see it.

I don’t even know what to watch for with this one.

 

 

How is guilt present for me?

 

Regret over choices made or omitted. Sorrow for past mistakes.

“All of us are victims of irrational thinking when it comes to grief and guilt.

Why? Because when we feel guilty it means that we believe in some sense that we have control over life. It’s an illusion of control over life and death.

Do we REALLY think we have that much control over when someone dies?”  . . . more here

 

 

Ahhh, then there is depression…my friend.

 

Friend is a funny word. My familiar. The one who was passed onto me through my genes. A state that I now recognize early and cut off at the pass.

I’ve not had the depression that required medication, but I have had periods of time in my life when I was sleepwalking through life. The walking dead, some would say. You keep going, but you’re not quite there. That was me.

“Embrace each challenge in your life as an opportunity for self-transformation.” Bernie Siegel

Bernie Siegel saved me from depression and a variety of neuroses that were a part of the unexplored landscape of me. He invited me to be alive. I still reach out for advice from this jewel of a man; my own personal superhero with a reference map to share.

 

In the image above, Depression lives next door to Acceptance.

 

Is this a reference to the dawn being right before the darkest time of night?

A fitting place to end this reflection, until the next time . . .