One Year Later

We are approaching the one-year anniversary of Will's dad's death. So many events and nuances trigger reminders. The hazy smoke permeating our town from the prairie burning. The warmer air and budding trees. The natural rhythm and cycle of the academic calendar. Will is giving a test today in his Electromagnetic Theory class - the same test he was grading in the ICU last year when his father became unexpectedly, suddenly, intensely ill.

Here is the funny thing about grief: It is so much larger, more terrible, more intense, more awful than I ever could have imagined. I logically know that Will and I are much younger than our parents, and that, in the natural order of the world, it is likely they will die before we do. But processing this grief, processing the magnitude of a loss so great, has taken my breath away over just how terrible it is to lose someone who is such an integral part of your life.

I have learned that grief never gets easier - that you may end up with longer stretches of time when you forget the person is gone - but that when you remember on a deep, visceral level you will never see this person alive again in our current life - the intensity of that loss feels just as raw as the day they died. In some ways, even, processing death is even harder than in the immediate aftermath, when life is busy with logistics and plans and a sense of purpose to honor and celebrate their lives. When the dust has cleared and fellow mourners have also returned home is when the real sense of loss becomes clear.

When will we stop missing my father-in-law? Never, ever, ever, ever. But some days are harder than others. And this approaching one-year anniversary is one of those times.