Difficult Year

Maybe some years are just going to be tough.

I don't recall ever seeing it covered in a grief book, but I re-read the part on anniversaries and holidays today, which is accepted as common knowledge.  (In case you're unaware, anniversaries and holidays are generally harder grief times.)  It makes sense that major milestones make one think of it more, and the impact harder to absorb.

I'm in my Fifth Year.  Yes, it deserves capitalization.  Because I've survived or am surviving 5 of everything now - 5 birthdays without him, 5 anniversaries without him (my first was within a month of him passing), 5 Memorial Days & 5 Veteran's Days (bonus grief days that come with him being a military man).  I'm proud of everything I've done in the past 5 years - and wish he was here to celebrate with me.

Then again, maybe it's just that life's finally evened out.  I have a job I chose that pays 100% of my bills.  The daily stress of what-to-do is gone.  Maybe it's that life has settled that means I'm circling back to... and I'm doing it without him.

Regardless, 7 months in, I'm finally accepting that it is no one big thing, it's not a milestone birthday or falling away of old friends, it's just a tough year.  And like I learned in the days, weeks & months after he died, you have to let yourself feel what you feel when you feel it.  If that means you break down crying, then cry.  If that means you have to throw something, try to not make it something with special meaning.  If that means you're just going to be depressed, be depressed.  Because if there's one thing you learned in the past 5 years, it's that this, too, shall pass, and good days will come again.

And all years eventually end.