Fall has traditionally been my favorite season – I LOVE the crispness of fall mornings that turn into warm afternoons, being able to wear hoodies with shorts without being hot or cold, the colors in the plants, the break from summer’s sun. I was a kid who loved school, so I think I have this engrained excitement that pops up whether the school calendar is relevant to me or not. Introspection goes hand in hand with fall, as the day and night is equal again and then we slide into the dark part of the year, when night is longer than day.
This has always felt like the most emotional season for me, something that has only become more true in the last few years. I feel more sensitive to life’s energies, and with that, I feel my grief dancing at the surface, as if it is coming up to breathe after being submerged for an extended period. I don’t know if it would feel different had Sara not died in the fall, but she did, and here we are.
Between seeing the approach of the 3rd anniversary of Sara’s death a little over a month away, and seeing my life change so drastically in this past year between the 2nd and the 3rd anniversaries, my mind keeps returning to grief not as something tied to a singular event (a death) but as something tied to all those ripples in the future that the originating event impacts. This quote from Megan Devine really sums it up well:
And this is a thing many people outside your grief cannot understand: that you have not simply lost one person, at one point in time. You have lost their presence in every aspect of your life. Your future has changed as well as your “now.” As your grief unfolds, you will find more and more places their absence shouts.
Megan Devine “the future has evaporated” on her website, Refuge in Grief
The further I get into my future without Sara, I keep finding new places where her absence is felt. Some days her absence is but a whisper, and other days it is the roaring of hurricane force winds.
A few months back my therapist revisited the topic of dating again, something I’ve not had much interest in since Sara died. That was in part because all my energy was focused on become pregnant, and then on white-knuckling it through my pregnancy in hopes of ending up with a living child. The other reason for my lack of interest in dating was because my heart was in survival mode for quite a while after Sara’s death. The wound I’d suffered was so deep; it needed time to develop a scar and for me to learn how to move and live in this world forever changed as a person.
Now that my youngest son is here with me, there has been a definite shift in my heart & brain toward what our future might look like, and part of me does hope that at some point that future might include a new partner. With that, it also just feels very… complicated. I know without a doubt that my grief for Sara will last as long as my love for her, which will be the rest of my life. Any potential partner will need to be okay with us always making room in our home and in our life for Sara (and George!) as part of the family, and for my grief. So much of my support system is in my life because of Sara. Those ripples that trigger fresh grief will continue to occur – I expect them to perhaps get a bit further apart as the years go on, maybe lessen a bit in intensity, but they will never completely go away.
The good thing about love is that it’s not a pie. It’s not limited. There aren’t only so many slices to go around. I can hold my love for Sara while also developing love for someone else. I don’t know what the future has in store for Theodore and I. Maybe it will just be the two of us until he’s grown, and maybe it won’t. No matter what, my goal is for love to be the foundation – that doesn’t guarantee things will be easy (they most certainly won’t be at times), but it does mean that I will always stay rooted in what is most important.