Third anniversary: August 12, 2018

On Sunday, August 12th, on my way to church, I made a voice memo about David’s death anniversary. For several months, I’ve noticed that I have to count to determine how long David’s been dead. It’s been exactly three years, but it feels like four years, or five. I calculate: it’s 2018 and he died in 2015; I’m sure of that. 18 minus 15 is three. I’ve gone through that arithmetic many times. I mentioned it to Jim. He suggested that it’s because so much has happened in our lives since then. Spoleto USA, three years in a row. The total eclipse in Idaho. A reunion in Maine last month, preparing for our own in a week. The lives of our three grandchildren: Andrew, age five, Victoria, who turned three on August 12, and Eliza. We spent Thanksgiving with my sister Maggie and her husband, and saw dear Eliza on the day of her birth.

Victoria was born 40 minutes after David died. Everything we’ve done with her has happened after David’s death. Sometime after David died, I restarted my frequent drives to the Bronx to see Andrew and Victoria. (Oh, yeah, and I see their parents, too…)

This week, I’ve had an email exchange with my friend Cort. A year ago, on August 6th, his wife, Corey, died unexpectedly in her sleep. She was exactly a month shy of 41. David had been dead just two years. Although I’ve been emailing about grief to Cort, I hadn’t made the connection that Corey died just six days before David’s anniversary. And it will always be so. Maybe I’ll remember Corey’s easier that way, knowing her death was 23 months after David’s.

Friday, we took a guided tour of Lexington’s Old Burying Ground. The earliest graves date from 1690. It’s a recurring guided tour; I chose the day that Jim was available. I didn’t realize that it would be so close to David’s death date. That’s the thing about the third anniversary: I keep being reminded that I’ve forgotten. If someone would ask me when David died, I would say, instantly, August 12th, 2015. It’s there, but somehow, emotionally, it hasn’t been in my consciousness as much, frankly, as I feel it “should be”.

Early grief feels like it’s never going to change, that gut-wrenching searing pain. Even though people told me it would change, it would be easier, I couldn’t really imagine it. That’s the cognitive distortion of powerful emotion. It’s one that I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of. I would only say, in my experience, there has been healing of the raw wound and hope they can find comfort in that. Healing has happened, is still happening.