The 2nd Year Is Harder
Grant,
In 2 days it will be your birthday. You’d be 40, but you’re dead, so you won’t be. You stopped aging at 38. You managed to immortalize yourself in your youthfulness, before your age really started to show, before you were affected by all the life lessons and joys of growing older. Congratulations.
That’s how old I am now, 38. I will also age past 38, so there’s that too. I was widowed at the tender age of 36. Now that seems like such a long time ago. Now that seems like I was just so young. Now I’m as old as you’ll ever be, but I’m still living. I’m alive, feeling, thinking, experiencing. I will grow older. You’re not here doing all this with me.
I don’t want to celebrate your birthday. I loved to honor and appreciate you on your birthday when you were alive. But, you're not here and I just don’t feel like celebrating you, without you present. Birthdays are supposed to be fun. It’s not fun to celebrate you when you’re not going to show up for your own party!
Why not celebrate? It seems obvious to me. You’re not turning 40! Why celebrate a milestone you’re not achieving. You’re not here and you’re not going to be-ever again! To be honest, I hate you for it right now. I’m really feeling this today for some reason.
Right after your birthday is Thanksgiving. This will be the second Thanksgiving, and Christmas and New Year’s for that matter. It’s an entire holiday season without you, again. All these ‘white picket fence wishes’ are not now possible for me and our boys, my boys, because you’re gone. You’re not here and you won’t be for all time. You’re gone, doing whatever you are doing, being whatever you are now.
In the first year, I had the protection of shock. I was going through the motions and just getting through it. They say, if you can get through all the firsts then you have made it through the worst of things. I, sometimes mechanically, got through the first year. They say that the first year is the crest of the mountain, then it starts getting better, easier, more normal and more okay. Well, that’s not true! This year feels much worse.
Last year, I had the kids to think of, to care for and to handle. They need their parents while they are forming their minds and lives and I was the only one of those 2 left. I felt like I needed to make life lovely for them, normal, comfortable and ok during the shock and pain of the radical life change of your death.
And still, in the back of my mind, I felt, well, if he misses one birthday or holiday that is forgivable anyway. But now, to miss 2 birthdays in a row and the whole holiday season again, now that’s not as forgivable. I look at this holiday season before us, this will be the 2nd Thanksgiving and the 2nd Christmas you’re missing. You’ll miss the whole entire experience again. The gift giving, the anticipating faces, the joyful and tired glee.
The shock has worn off now that I’m past so many firsts. But really, the 2nd’s aren’t seeming to be better or easier or more natural and comfortable. Will I ever get comfortable without you here? I don’t know that I am even comfortable trying. It seems more natural to not be comfortable with your absence during important life and holiday moments in the family you and I created!
I seem to have settled into the deep pain of this reality, and again realizing or maybe feeling it on another level, you’re definitely not coming back. It wasn’t just, oh you couldn’t make it back from that trip because the plane was delayed. Now it’s the second year and you still won’t make it. What kind of man would leave his children for 2 birthday’s in a row? Two Thanksgivings in a row and 2 Christmases in a row? How will I feel when it's 3, then 4! With your new promise to never show up for another one? Unfortunately, this is a promise I know you will keep.
I don’t know yet how to process this harsh fact. How to accept that you are truly suddenly gone. Period. Or that you would be here if you could. I don’t get how to acknowledge that you want to be and are and would do everything in your power to be with us, especially during all the holidays, birthdays and other important family milestones. It’s not yet in my grasp.
With your birthday coming up, what would have, should have been a huge celebration, will be another day that passes. Uneventful. Why? Because I don’t want to celebrate you not here. Now I’m really just starting to feel that on this second missed birthday, not the first. The first danced by, but the second, it solidifies that you’re gone and this is the new normal.
One I don’t like, don’t want and didn’t ask for; yet here it sits at my feet. I’m feeling sad today and it’s because it just feels real. I don’t want to see it, but there’s nothing else for me to look at, so I just feel sad. I’m not trying to find anything happy in this one, this time.
And ya know what, I’ve decided that’s ok too. Maybe I just went against what I just said and I am finding that joy in feeling the sad. Maybe it really is ok to just be sad. I accept that, and that does feel good. But I’m still very sad.