Everything I’ve read about hitting the six month mark in the grieving process is split into one of two camps: The pain will lessen vs. that is the time it really hits you. Kinda like the weatherman covering all bases by saying there’s a fifty percent chance of rain.
For me it’s an amalgam of the two. I can go almost a week feeling pretty normal and able to cope, but only because I am emotionally numb. Then I’m carried back underwater by a wave so mighty it is hard to break surface and breathe.
Yesterday was my wedding anniversary and I tried to treat it like any other work day. But the wave was building, and would not be denied. It broke in the afternoon when some compassionate friends had flowers sent to my house. A beautiful mixed bouquet of roses, alstroemeria, lillies and sunflowers. It was the sunflowers that set off a crying jag just as I was getting on a conference call and so had to put my phone on mute for that painful hour.
James liked fake flowers. We used to argue over it. But I had acquiesced and allowed a fake spray of sunflowers he had bought grace our front doorway in a – what else – umbrella stand with painted sunflowers he had found at a junk shop. They were in my wedding bouquet and I insisted on sunflowers in the spray that adorned his coffin.
Last evening, I plucked two of the sunflowers from my friend’s bouquet and drove to the cemetery. I cried. I ranted like a crazy person. I looked up at the clouds and begged for a reason. I denied that the rainbow that was present at that time was any sort of sign. I wanted James to acknowledge what used to be our special day. I wanted confirmation that he knew how much I was suffering. It was unreasonable, but so is death.
Grief is an annoying houseguest who won't leave 