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Key points
- Experts consider the first two years to be early grief.
- Grief evolves at its own pace and cannot be hurried.
- There is no getting around grief; you can only go through it.
Trigger warning: Considering that grief triggers can happen any time and any place, it’s a pretty safe bet that a blog about grief will contain triggers. If you’re grieving and feeling particularly fragile, perhaps save this for another day.
It’s been almost two years since Tom died. A couple of hours ago, I was lounging on my bed doing a crossword puzzle. It’s a brilliant winter afternoon. The sun streamed through the windows and my dog snored quietly nearby. And, suddenly, out of nowhere, I missed Tom so much that I thought my heart might explode. The yearning made me dizzy.
Let me tell you something that is crucially important for not just grievers to hear but also people who care for them:
Experts consider early grief to be the first two years.
I’ll say it again because it’s that important:
Early grief is the first two years.
It might be even longer for those of us blindsided by death, as opposed to those whose loved one went through a decline before passing, providing time to adjust to the inevitable—which is not to say that their grief is less, just that they have a head start on people like me.
Many people imagine that six months or a year after a major loss, you should be pulling yourself together and returning to “normal.” This is nuts. In the first place, for someone who has lost a loved one, there is no “normal” anymore. For me, “normal” includes Tom. Eventually my “normal” will include grief in the background, but, for now, the fact that there is no Tom anymore is front and center for me all the time. And this is not unusual.
Grief is a process that takes as long as it takes, and it takes a lot longer than any of us want. I’d love to be done with grief. Too bad for me. My grief guru, David Kessler, says that when people ask how long they will grieve, his response is, “How long will your loved one be dead?”
The concept of “getting over” the death of a loved one is a myth. The pain softens from the unbearable anguish of the earliest days, but the loss is forever and so the grief is forever, waxing and waning from day to day—sometimes minute to minute.
One Griever's Timeline
Here’s a somewhat awkward truth: I didn’t really start crying until about four months in. Had you seen me in the earliest months, you might have marveled at my strength. I vaguely remember chatting and even laughing with people.
I imagine the eyebrows of many other grievers just shot up. Laughing? Who can laugh in the throes of recent loss? Some people feel they will never laugh again. I don’t know how to explain myself; that’s just how it was for me. I was numb. I didn’t yet fully comprehend what had happened. My brain was protecting me from the reality.
At the same time, however, I was not sleeping. For months, I left my bedside lamp on and streamed "Gilmore Girls" all night, dozing and waking, dozing and waking, drifting in and out of the innocuous goings-on in Stars Hollow and feeling the emptiness of the bed beside me. I don’t think I could hear the theme of that show again now without being thrown back into that weird, dark time.
I also did not stay alone. First, local friends took turns staying overnight; then my adult godson, in a footloose phase, moved in with me for a few months.
I couldn’t tell you why or how my emotional dam broke, but when the crying did finally start, it was a tsunami. I cried constantly. Wailed even. Sounds came out of me I didn’t know I was capable of. The crying owned me. It would come over me suddenly and could literally bring me to my knees.
While I remained functional when I wasn't sobbing—getting my work done, feeding myself, spending time with close friends—this went on for months. I don't remember how long because early grief is like living in a fugue state, but at perhaps a year, it started tapering off. Instead of several times a day, I’d sob maybe once a day, depending. (On what? I don’t know. Sometimes a trigger; sometimes out of the blue.) Passing the one-year mark, I could sometimes go a full day without crying. At this point, I go days at a time without tears. Sometimes a week or more. I'm still sad; I just don’t cry as much.
Year Two and Beyond
Everybody’s grief is different (I can’t say that often enough) but a lot of people feel that the second year—when the rest of the world imagines you’re moving on—is as hard or harder than the first, just in different ways. While this is not true for everyone, it has been true for me.
Here in my second year, it’s starting to really sink in that this is it. This is my life now. In addition, I have been doing “grief work”—support groups, therapy, reading, etc.—as hard as I can, and while it has all been extremely valuable, preventing me from drowning in tears or giving up on life, there is only so much it can accomplish.
I have done (and continue to do) all I can, and I still hurt, still grieve, still think about Tom the moment I wake in the morning and throughout every day. I still go to sleep many nights with innocuous TV ("Ted Lasso" these days) streaming me to unconsciousness. All the grief work in the world can’t make the sadness go away, and, for someone like me, who likes to take action, fix things, get 'er done, and move on, this is a hard truth. I can’t fix it. I can’t go around it. I can only go through it.
Recently, in a support group I attended, a woman who is three years in talked about how she was becoming painfully aware of her changed social status, the difference between being part of a couple and being single. I have not yet wrestled with that, but I see it coming as the pandemic lockdown loosens and socializing gears back up. There is no more we out in the world. There is just me. It is yet another layer of acceptance. Grief is an onion, layer on layer on layer. (Plus it makes you cry.)
I don't know how far in the past Tom’s death feels to other people, but it still seems like yesterday to me. The loss of a loved one is so enormous, it dwarfs the calendar. My grief has evolved, but I still grieve pretty hard.
In my backyard is a tree that the home’s previous owner propped up with a piece of metal when it was just a sapling. Over the years, the tree has grown around the metal, which is now firmly embedded in it. It is a healthy tree, a strong tree, but it has had to thrive around what is, essentially, a wound.
This is grief. It doesn’t grow smaller; we must grow around it. And that takes as long as it takes, which is a lot longer than anyone wants—especially those of us who grieve.
Facebook/LinkedIn image: shisu_ka/Shutterstock
