Year Three

🦸🏻‍♂️
Jason died two years and two months ago.

Year One had the initial shock and loss.
The cleaning out of his medical supplies.
The “widow fog” where I had difficulty processing information and remembering.
The goal to walk 15,000 steps a day because that’s all I felt like I could do. Walk. All day.
The managing the basics of motherhood. The allowing of my emotions. Over and over and over again.

Into Year Two, I cautiously felt ready for the next thing.
I went to Life Coach School.
My calendar filled a little more.
I decided to work on my mindset about my body. I lost 14 pounds and managed my mind better than ever.

Then came Year Three.
I began a different kind of grieving in April. As they anniversary of his death approached, it felt heavy.
But not the kind of heavy I was used to feeling.
It didn’t move through me like I was used to.
It stayed.
Weeks have passed.
I’m still in the heaviness.

I accomplish things and pursue my goals and laugh real laughter.
But a weight lingers around me. In me.
I’ve been eating my emotions.
I’ve gained those 14 pounds back.
Oh hello, I sigh. You’re here again.

I’m impatient to see myself move through this period. To grieve like I used to instead of this extended, slightly relentless version of loss.
It’s new to me.

I went to the cemetery today.
Then, feeling my empty heart ache, I began to drive along the rural roads out west of our home.
I listened to Melinda play the music from Jason’s funeral. 
This video. I played it over and over and over and over.
Tears flowed as I meandered along. Pushing repeat on this song.

I’m in a different type of grief than I’m used to.
Trying not to hurry to move on from it but impatient anyway.
A little rushed.
“Come on,” my mind says. “You’ve been feeling like this for four months.”

I’m working on gently reminding myself that it’s perfectly fine to feel this for four months. Or five. Or more.
It’s just another new aspect I’m learning about grief. Another emotion to allow. Another chance to learn to have compassion toward myself.
But I feel impatient anyway.

Grief is all of the things.
Whatever I feel. Whenever I feel it. However long it lasts.
This seems to be just the next grief thing.✊🏻💙