It's that time of the year. There's always that time of the year when grief rears its stallion like hoofs and stomps you into the ground looking down at you with fierce wild eyes.
Holidays are the big ones for grief. Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Years Eve, Valentines Day (which is Donna’s Birthday), and others. They all tend to remind you of the negative space in your life. Saudade which is from Portuguese and means the presence of an absence. There is a post on that word here & here.
@DinaLRelles
Before I do my grief rage post I want to be clear about grief, my grief and why I live with it.I am not a fan of closure. Closure is indifference. Closure is denial said pretty. I won’t shut Donna out nor push her to one side. “This Too Shall Pass When I Say So and On My Terms” addresses that in detail. Bottomline for me, my grief is my wound a wound that has allowed light, knowledge, and understanding into my heart. My grief journey continues to be hard and painful yet filled with knowledge. I am different now. Donna showed me what could be found within me if I looked and listened to me. Grief helped me open that up. I just hate being the one who is living. I got this.
Where was I? Oh yeah, fuck you grief. The anniversary day each year is the day when grief stabs me in the face and eviscerates my soul. Anniversary’s are how we define our person, significant other, our spouse, and Donna. It is marked by time in years. Each year is a mosaic of small memories creating a larger story. "Donna, A Photo Memoir of Love and Loss" is that story.
Anniversary grief is subtle.. You know the date and in your mind you smile remembering what happened that day and all that made up the 28 years that followed. Then one morning you wake expecting to do the usual, calling out Donna just because it's what you do to greet the day. Anniversary time it's a plaintive cry imploring the gods to ease the pain that has settled in your bones.
I spend days moving toward our anniversary thinking about my loss, her death, why, did I do right by Donna while she was in treatment, was her death good, and what am I now? I think about the gifts I would buy or the dinner I would make. Even where to take Donna for dinner. Those are a vapid set of thoughts. Donna is not coming back. I know I can join her at any time. I got this.
I look at things in the house and see anniversary gifts given and gotten. I see things I have purchased after her death and I wonder if they would pass muster? I feel the profound loss swirling around me in all things present and not present. All becoming more acute as the anniversary approaches. That day, May 15, is packed with so much meaning, hope, and memories is taunting me. Laughing at me. Letting me know it is toying with me just to watch me close my eyes and cry. Pule.
This anniversary my screaming grief as always is about loss and pain. It is also a reminder of how in grief I have grown, changed, and became more of what, I hope Donna would see, as a better me. The difference this year is that I am seeing more of me for me and that is killing me because I have no one to share it with to say look Donna I’m okay. Not okay in that I can do my laundry and cook. Always have. Okay that I think, Donna you may be proud of me of what I have learned and doing. To fucking bad is the reality. No one else sees it or benefits. Just me with my emptiness and ideation infested anniversary week.
Every moment I spent in grief I learned more about Donna- me-love. The wound of grief is called love. This is who you are to me today Donna, grief and love.
I bought you an anniversary gift. I will give it to you soon. Love, Mark