blogs

In the books I read on grief, I learned the second year of loss is often harder than the first. That seemed impossible to me. The first year had been painful beyond description. While I knew healing wasn’t a linear process when measured in days, surely it was when measured in weeks or months. I could understand how year two might be worse for those whose loved ones had died in such a way that a court case was pending or an arrest had yet to be made. Deferred grief made sense in those situations where you were waiting for justice to be done, thus postponing the gut wrenching grief that must eventually come. But in a situation such as ours where we lost our son suddenly, with no warning and no foul play involved, I couldn’t fathom the second year being worse than that first hellish year. In fact, it wasn’t worse but it wasn’t much better either. It turned out to be the third year before the sun began to break through the heavy cloud cover in my life. Much of the first year is spent in shock. It takes a long time to reconcile the reality that the one you love and miss so much is gone forever. By the second year, that is painfully evident in every way. You have gone through all the holidays, birthdays, special events, the four seasons of the year and yet, he is still gone and life for others continues on.  It is said that when you lose your parents, you lose your past; when you lose your child, you lose your future. That “lost future” feeling still haunts Ron and me. We grieve all the things that will never be that were important parts of our planned future. We will never go to parents’ weekend at Ryan’s university; see him graduate from college; get his first real job; get married; have kids of his own. We will never have his children as our grandchildren. We had always pictured ourselves as loving, involved grandparents and Ryan had even chosen our grandparent names for his kids. I was to be Nana and Ron was to be Pop Squat. We used to joke about the stories we were going to tell his kids about their dad. Year two of our loss was filled with reminders of all we had lost and how irrevocably our lives had been altered.