I like to plan things. Always have, always will. I find it comforting to know when to look forward to things, when I have to be somewhere, and when I can have some down time to myself. Not everything can be planned for though. Over the past years, I have found that I try to schedule times to let myself be sad. Not just have a blue day, but really allow the grief to take up residence inside myself. The first year, I had no control over this at all, and would just start to weep when the smallest thing brought my loss back into sharp focus. I think I hated the feeling of losing control of my emotions more than the feelings themselves, so I started to try to plan for it. After all, I planned ways to get back some semblance of normal life; I went back to work, starting thinking of having more kids, allowed myself to have fun again. It stood to reason that I could schedule grief. I started thinking about what times would be hard for me, and when I could adequately “make time” to feel sad.
I wanted his birthday to be a day of remembrance and joy for the little time we had. No time for grief that day. I wanted the day before to be a day to not dwell, to think of my life before this tragedy, to block everything else out and focus on frivolities and fun. That was unequivocally the worst day of my life, and in my quiet moments, the pain on the faces of people that love me come back to me as sudden as lightning. If I give that day a moment's thought, the weight of it will consume me. So when would I allow myself to feel the sadness if not the days closest to the anniversary?
There lies the problem. Because I am going to get sad and mournful and distracted and emotional and weepy and nostalgic as his anniversary approaches. My heart doesn't know that I have to function, and do my job well, and support my friends through their own tough times, and listen when people talk to me. My head can look at a calendar and know that I have work, and bills and priorities and obligations. But my heart just knows there is someone missing in the world, and I don't need a calendar to tell me what an amazing six year old my son would have been. Cheerful and stubborn and verbose like his mother, helpful and gentle and restless like his father. Both my heart and my head know these things for sure. I can not plan a time to be sad, any more than I can plan for moments of great joy. I can just allow myself to feel them, and hopefully, after six years, learn how to embrace them when they come, feel them fully, and move on from them. Because I plan to be happy in my life, as best I can.
Oh I so get this. How I have pretended that grief is like Christmas decorations stored in a rubbermaid box in the basement. I yearn to go downstairs once a year, take the lid off and peer inside, and just when a tear might start, re-seal the container, shove it onto its shelf, go back upstairs, and turn-off the lights. I've pretended I could live this way. I also get knowing you can't do that, but for me, knowing it and actually getting it seem to be two different things. The getting it usually involves a messy process.
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