Happy Sunday, good friends in the Land of Loss and/or Widowhood who are reading this. Here in Massachusetts, it is pouring down rain and there will be storms and thunder and lightning today. Again. It feels like its done nothing but rain since about mid-May, and since we opened our pool for the season; excited and anxious to get it set up, clean it, vacumn it, and … you know …. SWIM IN IT!!! But so far, that has only happened for me, one day, for Nick, maybe two days. (I had to work on that second day where the sun actually came out for more than 10 minutes). Last year, we put down a pretty good chunk of money on a brand new pool liner, and now we would love to enjoy our pool, but here we are now with June all gone and nothing but awful weather to show for it. On the one hand, yes, this is very disappointing. Obviously. On the other hand, its obviously just a pool, and there are way bigger problems to have in life, which of course, we all know, right?

But theres more to it than that..

For most people, the constant rain and dark skies can become depressing. And I have some of that in me too. But for me, in this particular month, the rain is a lot less depressing and triggering than the hot humid days with scorching hot sun that often happen this time of year.

You see, this is July. This is “the month.” If you are widowed and you are reading this, you know exactly what Im talking about. We all have our month. The month on the calendar where everything changed in an instant – either by being jarred awake by a phone call like me to the reality of sudden loss, or by a doctor telling you of the diagnosis that would rock your world forever, or the many other ways that widowhood entered into our lives uninvited. And yes, we all have other months that are hard too – anniversaries, birthdays, other milestone days, holidays – the list goes on and on – but every one of us has THE MONTH. The month that destroyed us for a long time after. The month they died.

And during that month, whether its been two weeks since your loss, or coming up on twelve years like me, it always effects you. For me, the “day” itself is July 13th, but the second that calendar says July 1st, I can feel it in my bones and in my heart. My body feels it and I start aching all over in preparation. The eczema gets stronger, the allergies get worse, the migraines happen, I feel lethargic and confused by little things. My brain gets that scrambled feeling and I start doing time-jumps that send me back to “that morning” in a cruel instant. I start getting jarred by every little noise and every unexpected thing, especially early in the morning. I start worrying extra about all the people I love, and the nightmares come around again where I come home to find my new love/husband Nick or my dad or my mom or my brother – dead on the floor, or I get another phone call that changes life forever. There are many days in July where I wake up in a panic, and I cant shake that awful feeling of “something terrible is going to happen” for hours.

And in the month of July, the weather is what affects me more than anything. Sure, the rain is depressing and annoying and it’s enough already lately, but the weather that was going on in the surrounding before, during, and after days of the sudden death of Don Shepherd, was blazing hot sun, humid and muggy and nasty, and temperatures in the high 90s, and sometimes over 100. The day he collapsed and died, it felt like the air was made of soup. The day of his funeral, one of the Air Force members who was holding up one of the flags during the service, fainted from dehydration and heat stroke. My dad kept asking the funeral director to please put the A.C. on, and he kept saying: “Its on! It’s turned all the way up!” So many of the horrific memories I have surrounding Don’s death involve very hot, sun blazing type July days. It felt like the sun was attacking me personally, and like I was being choked by it’s ungodly oven-like air.

All this is to say, it is July and I’m struggling. It’s been twelve years, and yes, of course I’m doing well in my day to day life and I have found love again and I’m embarking on a new career path in Grief Counseling and all of that. AND – July is hard, and it sends me back in time, and its traumatic and awful and it sucks. Being in San Diego around my widowed community friends and presenting at Camp Widow is definitely going to help greatly, and Im SO glad Im going. But this is more about the ongoing grief and trauma and the hold it can take during “that month” over most of us. It is just one of those simple realities that each of us faces as part of our loss, except that nothing about it is ever simple, is it?

If you are a widowed person reading this, just know that “your month” can affect you in numerous ways, even if it’s been several years since the loss. Just know that it’s normal to feel ungrounded or triggered back to that time or unsteady or any other number of various ways. Be kind to yourself, and do your best to take good care of yourself during this time.

If you are not widowed and you love a person who is widowed and you are reading this, just know that the person you love may still be affected on the death anniversary of their partner or spouse, and may still feel a certain way in the days and weeks surrounding that death day. This does not mean something is wrong with them or that you should worry. Even when we try to forget, our bodies know. Our hearts remind us that our world was altered forever on that day, in that month, on that morning or that night or whenever it was that everything flipped. If you love them, please don’t judge them or make them feel worse for feeling not themselves during this time. Please be kind and compassionate, and if you can’t understand it, consider yourself lucky that a rainy day is just a rainy day and not something that brings you great relief because it’s not the blazing hot sun that brought instant and forever death to your world.

What is your month, and how will you get through it?

Thanks for reading.