February 26th

Not too long ago, I found February tolerable.  It’s a cold month here and tends to drag, but it has bright spots too.  February has the benefit of winter den isolation, while giving us renewed energy from the lengthening days and brighter sun of midwinter.  All of my children have February birthdays, so for two decades the month was filled with party planning, gift giving and cake baking.  Then there is Valentine’s Day, a pleasant day Ken and I might have celebrated with a special dinner or fresh flowers, always with some chocolates.  And when cabin fever got us down, sometimes we’d take a short getaway, like the year we went to Punxsutawny with the kids to witness the spectacle of Groundhog Day.  February can be a harsh month but we managed it together.

Now February is full of different affiliations.  The first of February was the day I was tasked with telling Ken that there were no more medical interventions available to him.  A few days later we brought him home from the hospital, and moved him into our living room transformed into a dying room.  Every day of that month there was some new difficulty to deal with as he slowly lost the ability to do anything but moan and breathe.  The confusion and the exhaustion of those weeks culminated in his death on February 26.

The other night while I sat on the couch watching TV, I heard a little noise from the kitchen.  It was probably a cat, or maybe some slight settlement of this old house, but the thought that initially flashed through my mind was “there’s Ken”.  Ken in the kitchen, maybe finishing up the dishes or opening up a beer, hearing Ken around the house was such a normal part of life for so long, it is no surprise to think of him when I hear movement.  But just as quickly, the next thought screeched in, “No. Not Ken.”  Of course not Ken.  He has been gone for two years.  It doesn’t seem possible that two entire years have passed, probably because my brain isn’t yet completely on board with the concept.    

The tears continue to come at the slightest of reminders of him, and I’m not sure why stopping them is getting harder instead of easier.  Maybe because after the passage of time I am more able to be open to the sadness or maybe because the reality of his loss continues to get, well, more real.  There is a pictorial depiction circulating on the interwebs that shows that grief doesn’t shrink as the months and years elapse, but that our outer life changes and expands around it, so proportionately grief can seem smaller over time.  But right now, I feel like my grief keeps getting bigger, or maybe just denser.  Our love for each other grew deeper over the years, and apparently my grief is also maturing.

As I face the dread of how to get through the anniversary of his death, it occurs to me that we have no cultural tradition around this day.  There are all sorts of ways we celebrate birthdays and Valentines Day and wedding anniversaries every year, but after the burial and memorial service, there’s typically no on-going ritual observed in our communities for a death.  I know that it can be a day full of painful associations, so maybe many of us prefer to ignore it, but it is such a significant day in our lives.  The push to move on, so prevalent in our culture of the next best thing, creates even more isolation for the grieving.  It seems fitting for me to do something, but I don’t know what that should be.

The kids and I plan a visit over the prior weekend since they will all be working on the anniversary.  We don’t make a firm decision on what in particular to do with ourselves, but at least we will be together.  We are four different people grieving four different relationships, and so perhaps finding a single activity meaningful for all of us is unrealistic.  But it is a comfort to reminisce with them about Ken as we sort through some of his things.    

I have a friend whose father died suddenly when she was on the cusp of parenthood herself.  Beth has developed her own tradition to commemorate him: she rides her bike on his birthday, one mile for every year of the age he would have been on that day.  Early April can be a nice time of year for outdoor exercise in PA, or not.  While typically she has some company on her trek, she has on occasion gone solo when there are no takers for a ride in the cold rain or bitter wind.  After the ride, she drinks his favorite Carling Black Label to complete this very personal ritual in memory of her beloved father.  And perhaps this is why we don’t have a set grieving tradition, since we all have different ways of coping, but how lovely to have a deliberate way of remembering.

I spoke to a long-widowed woman the other day and she told me to “take as long as I need” to heal.  And while I know that I should, some days it is frustrating to still feel in the throes of grief.  I am tired of being sad.  Her comment made me think of the widowed friend of my parents, who confided in me in the receiving line before Ken’s memorial service that “This year has been the hardest one yet” for her, the sixth year without her husband.  “Six years!” I exclaimed to a friend afterward.  “How will I stand this pain for six years?!”  Obviously, I will carry the loss forever, but to think that the pain might get worse instead of lessen even after six years?  It was a hard thing to hear only a few weeks into widowhood and even now, it is difficult to accept that this is going to take a while.  When Ken and I married, it took time to adjust to accommodating one another.  Just as I once made room in my life for him, I am still learning how to live with all the space he left behind.

I got through the day on the 26th with a plan to spend most of it in relative isolation at home.  I stayed busy finishing a few tasks that have been getting pushed aside in the last month of near-paralysis, took a yoga class to grant myself an hour of focused serenity, and got outside in the unseasonably warm weather to trim our fruit trees, overgrown from the last few years of neglect.  Not up for much social interaction, I did answer a few texts from those who remembered the day, and turned down a few kind invitations for the evening.  But it felt neglectful to not do something special, so late in the afternoon I decided to take myself out to dinner to one of our favorite restaurants, a place we reserved for anniversaries and birthdays.

As I was driving there, I thought it ironic that I was not going to celebrate something per se.  After all, commemorating is different than celebrating, and there is nothing about the loss of my husband I want to celebrate.  I sat at the bar, my back to the dining room, so I could be among people yet not be obligated to talk about why I was splurging on a fine meal alone.  But it felt right to take good care of myself on a hard day, and eat a lovingly prepared meal instead of some leftover soup at home.

I am not about to bike 83 miles, at least not without some serious advance training.  But that’s ok, because we all need to find how best to remember our loved ones in a way that addresses our own needs.  Whether we do something special on their birthday or their death anniversary, whether we maintain a tradition or try something new every year, there is a comfort in staying in relationship with the people who meant so much to us.  After all, what is more important than love?  I believe it is healing to continue to acknowledge that love, even when it is associated with the grief of loss.