It’s been over 15 months since I’ve written anything for this site. Life has just been…. so much. Working full time, being the solo parent to my wonderful now-28 month old, riding the waves of life’s highs and lows as we go through each day – it’s all a lot. Lots of good – joy, love, new experiences, familiar experiences, laughter, kindness, satisfaction… but plenty of hard stuff too – exhaustion, illness, the emotional roller coaster that is living with & caring for a toddler, fear and stress over world events, the constant whisper in the back of my mind that suggests I’m not enough.
For the last almost-5 years I’ve found my life settling into a new rhythm involving memories that show up as I progress throughout each year, living in my time of “after Sara”. The feelings aren’t always the same from year to year, from cycle to cycle. Intensity changes, layers shift, some memories stick out more one year than another, and what’s going on in my “real life” impacts the capacity I have for engaging in my grief, along with the depth to which I can take my engagement.
This past week, I started feeling the familiar tendrils of seasonal grief wrapping themselves around me. A day has not gone by that I don’t think about Sara, but the memories and the grief feel harder during the fall, since that marks the last few months of Sara’s life. At this point in the year, 5 years ago, we were less than a month out from losing George, my department at work had just undergone a dramatic restructuring that resulted in the loss of 4/6 of our team’s middle level management, and we were starting treatments for the cancer metastasis that had just been found in Sara’s brain. I honestly think I went emotionally numb for a while, just getting through each day as best as I could. When I look back – I don’t know how I survived all of that in such a short period of time.
On top of the normal seasonal grief that I feel resurfacing, as I get to know my son as a person with his own personality and quirks, I find my grief that he and Sara will never meet in person to be deepening. Oh, how they would’ve loved each other. My words seem so insufficient on this screen as I type that. They would have LOVED each other. Sara found being silly easier than I do, and I can just see her now, her giggles triggering Theo’s giggles, and his strengthening hers until they’re both laughing uncontrollably. I can see her delighting in cooking us meals as a family, and her frustration over toddler fickleness with food. I feel her joy and fear and pride as Theo becomes more independent in navigating this world. She was supposed to be my co-parent, my co-conspirator, my adventure partner, my refuge, my cheerleader, my anchor – and I was supposed to be hers. My heart breaks that this isn’t our reality and that Theo will only know her from pictures and stories and an awkward family tree.
I miss the companionship of a partner who made me feel loved without having to say anything. I miss seeing myself through Sara’s eyes. I miss her hugs. I miss her. I miss her. I miss her.
I don’t cry as often as I used to, but lately I’ve been feeling them well up more frequently. I’m taking Theo on a 3-day weekend trip into the mountains later this month. The last time I visited the mountains was when I was pregnant with Theo, around the 2nd anniversary of Sara’s death. Driving through a part of the mountains that had fairly fresh burn scars from a massive fire, singing along to music that intentionally tapped into my grief – it felt so primal, and so needed. I don’t know what I expect from the upcoming trip I have planned, but I’m looking forward to giving myself time and space to figure out how my current manifestation of grief needs to be tended.