Saturday, January 5, 2019

Reflections After 2 Years

Happy new year, folks! I hope you've all started off well with crushing those resolutions. I know I have, because one of my big ones is to write more! More on my resolutions in another blog post that will follow in the next few days.

For now, I'm going to share some reflections on where I've been and where I'm at in the grief department. This post will be about looking back and the next post will be about looking forward.

I was trying to remember how the grief felt in the early stages so, naturally, I did some research on my own blog. I found this post from February 24, 2017, about a month and a half after the funeral. I had watched Manchester by the Sea (which I still highly recommend for its very realistic portrayal of grief) and I especially identified with "aimlessness" of the main character. Immediately after Julia's death, I felt like there was a dense haze - or "invisible blanket" in CS Lewis' words - between myself and the world I was experiencing. It was hard to think, find energy for basic tasks, socialize - the grief was overwhelming.

Gradually, over that first year, this fog started to lift and it became easier to function from day to day.
My experience has mostly fit with Bowlby's stages of grief, which I wrote about here, although this first stage, Numbing, was the only one that was a definite "stage", with more or less a beginning and an end. I've moved between the latter three "stages", Yearning and Searching, Disorganization, and Re-Organization throughout my grief journey and still experience all of them.

It has become a tradition to have a little graveside "service" with friends each December. This year, we were able to visit with both families on December 21st as well. Grateful to have these people around in dark moments.

I've heard from a few people who have experienced intense grief that the 1st year is extremely difficult, but the 2nd year is harder, they say. People stop texting or calling, people stop talking about your loved one, memories start to fade. But the pain is still ever-present.

For me, the first year was definitely harder. The pain was just so strong, and most of the memories that my brain would jump back to were the hard memories of the last moments, and the after moments. And that was combined with the extreme frustration of not being able to function well.

However, some things about the 2nd year are harder. It has been hard to not hear Julia's name mentioned as often. It's completely understandable that Julia is not at the forefront of most people's minds - everyone has lives filled with their own worries and issues. Goodness knows how many people in my network are suffering from grief that I completely ignore. But it is isolating to realize that I am one of the few thinking about her constantly.

Time for me is a double-edged sword (I'm a bit embarrassed that I had to look it up to confirm, but this phrase does indeed mean it has both good and bad effects, not two bad ones...moving on). The bad thing about time is that memories of Julia fade. The good thing about time is that memories of Julia fade.

The good memories do get slightly less accessible over time. More and more I see a picture of us and say, "oh ya, that happened!" This is inevitable, it's how memories work. But it is hard because I feel a bit guilty, like I'm not thinking about her enough or trying hard enough to remember her.

However, the bad memories also intrude into my mind less often, which is good. In the first year, horrifying memories or images would hit me like a pile of bricks many times a day, which made it hard to focus on much. This still happens now, but not nearly as often.

Another big difference between year 1 and year 2 is how I view my health. In the early stages of grief, I didn't really pay attention to my health or how I was living. I don't think I actually really cared that I was alive. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't suicidal, or even clinically depressed (I don't think). I didn't want to die. I just didn't really care if I lived or died - such was the pain and fog.

Then it started to flip and I started to really care about my health. I have never had health anxiety, but I started to go down dark roads in my mind every time I felt any kind of soreness or developed a small bump. I am told this happens with most people after they've experienced an illness or loss of a loved one. We have a greater sense of our mortality.

Finally, my interactions with God have changed somewhat over the two years. What hasn't changed is that I've wrestled with Him constantly since Julia was diagnosed. There has always been a lot of anger and confusion. But at first, I compounded these issues by feeling guilty about my anger towards God.

But I've found in the Bible many instances of people who had intense anger towards God and the situation that He was not delivering them from. And these are people we'd consider "heroes" of the faith - Jeremiah, Job, David, Habakkuk, Paul. Jesus in Gethsemane, and on the cross. I've learned God does not want me to feel guilty, He just wants me to continue communicating with Him, even if it's mostly in anger or confusion.

That's enough for now. More to come in the next days and weeks.

3 comments:

  1. Andy thank you so much for sharing your journey. I know these honest words are a blessing to those who are grieving something other someone and those who miss Julia. You're a hero to Brad and I, truly.

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