The Countdown

“I hate this rollercoaster of emotion I’m on. I don’t understand why I am so sad lately,” this mom cried over the phone to me.

“Oh, I do,” I sighed, “I know exactly what you are going through.”

On the other end of the line I took a deep breath in and released it out in a long, steady stream. What do I say to a mama who is fast approaching the first anniversary of her child’s death? What comfort can I possibly bring when I myself am living in the very throes of what I call the “Countdown”?

The Countdown for me is the weeks leading up to the anniversary of losing Luke. I would like to tell you that the first year was the hardest, but I don’t remember if that is true. Thank you, Grief Brain. I can tell you that first year it was like I spent each day in March and April reliving exactly what had happened the year Luke died. This was the day he won the gaming competition, this was the day he had Saturday school, this was the day we talked about going to Mount Wachusett, and on and on and on. But, like a freight train headed into a brick wall, the reliving had an ultimate endpoint - April 14th.

Year One, here I am - sitting in the driver’s seat of this train of remembering - and as the date of Luke’s death gets closer, it’s like my remembering picks up speed, and because I can’t stop what I inevitably know will happen, I fill with more angst and heightened distress with each passing day. I am frazzled and grief stricken and this all comes to a head the moment the calendar changes from the 13th to the 14th. Once it is officially the 14th, I mark the day and honor my boy and my missing, and then come to the stark realization that somehow I have survived one year without my son… and somehow have so many more to go. Rivers and Roads, son, Rivers and Roads. Xxx

So here’s what I need you to know: It’s hard, this countdown. Trauma resides in our cells and every year it gets activated and we relive the passing of someone we love like some kind of twisted version of Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. But, dear momma, I don’t tell you this to add to your woe. I tell you this so you know I KNOW… I know the heartache, and the darkness, and the cliff you feel you are standing on the edge of. You need to honor those feelings… Every grief journey is different and every emotion is the right one for that time. And please know this - after ten long years, the countdown doesn’t bite quite the way it used to. Sure, I get a twinge every now and then when my head and my heart both realize that Luke’s anniversary is coming, but these days I try to fill my heart with all the goodness that was our seventeen years together. You’ll get there, too, momma… just hold on. Xxx