On August 7, 2011 Donna died in hospice. She entered hospice exactly 21 days prior. She was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer 938 days before her death. Or 22,512 hours.
August 7, 2011 was 10,311 days after we were married on May 15, 1983. We had 247,464 hours of marriage, love, and more.
This anniversary will be 4,384 days since her death. That is 105,216 hours of grief, memories, hurt, and learning.
So there you have the increments of time for my grief journey which comes into a sharp focus on Donna's day of death. The time between this date each year is filled with much. In fact that time between the August 11th's is the I live. As with any anniversary, this being a deathaversary, you stop, measure, and consider. Take a moment to remember what was, what is, and what's not. Love remains when knowing passes away. Love during grieving if listened to in a stillness of a silent evening brings understanding. I love the image of sitting in a field after sunset fireflies appear and guide you forward. Blinking in rhythmic beats of light This way! This way!
Donna would say that's why they call it history, it happened then. No need to look back. Then is resident in me. It is where what was is. This anniversary of Donna's death is different. It's a retrospective of insight over all that time. At times the loss is abject pain creating thoughts that cannot be shared. This time that history offers insight if I look and listen to the memories of Donna vibrating like a stringed instrument within me. Those vibrations are not just background to my life and self pity. Those vibrations sing of joy.
It’s about what was gained and learned and achieved since her death. It was not done de novo. It was done because of Donna. I'm not standing on Donna's ashes looking taller with knowledge. I'm standing next to her ashes with my finger tracing a heart in them knowing she loved me into being, believed in me when I didn't, and from the box of ashes she imbued my growth each of those 4,384 days.
The quantitive baseline of my emotional status was in 2012. The result of a bike accident where I developed a subdural hematoma. Nearly died. Was placed in a residential rehab for a month to learn to walk and speech. Post rehab I continued with outpatient rehab but more focused on psychotherapy. It was with a neuropsychologist. I spent about four months chatting my ass off with her. Fun AF. Just now after requesting those medical records in December of 2022 and filing a new request this week I got my files.
There's a lot there. Most of it jargon and test scores. I think what the neuropsych stated as her plan speaks to the fireflies point this way. What followed that time is the here and now of me and what I've continued to learn from Donna during our lives and the time since her death. Albeit perhaps not all that well.
Short term treatment goals 1) Establish emotional regulation strategies to manage frustration intolerance. 2) Increase acceptance of changes following injury. 3) Increase sense of purpose via increased engagement and feelings of efficacy. Lots of jargon. That was her assessment of me and my issues. I think taking them as a general statement of goals are fair and seeing if this many years later change was made is fair. The problem is they are jargon and not the emotional me. Some of the additional language used in the full report also fits: Imposter, better self-perception of self, feeling productive and connected as a method of intellectual validation, view future within shifted perspective, limited external reinforcements, falling short, increased flexibility and insight into perspective and ways to make changes.
So all of that was there then. What is now is in Part II. Her death changed me or the value of Post Traumatic Growth.