Cycles...

"How was your day?"

That's the standard question when I pick up Brent from work. He always asks me how my day was. It's really nice. I generally feel a little badly because I don't have anything really cool to tell him. My day is some combination of chores, writing, reading, maybe visiting with a friend but pretty much the same sort of day. Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly content with my days but I do wish I had something unusual to tell him.

But last week I picked him up and he asked and I told him, "Not good." And it hadn't been a good day. He, of course, wanted to know why and when I told him, "I just wasn't happy today. It was a not happy day" that made him really concerned. I am baseline happy. Most of the time I am happy. I am a happy person. I can find things to be happy about in the oddest of situations. Genetically I am predisposed to happiness and I also choose happiness whenever I can. So to not be happy is worrisome for him.

I told him it was just the first year. The first year is the hardest.

Which relieved him.

Not that I was sad about my mother dying, but that it was a perfectly normal thing to be sad about.

First years are the hardest.

Grief is difficult. It's a thing we carry with us forever when we lose someone. But in that first year it is still floating at the top of the cup. It hasn't settled down into it's permanent place yet. It sneaks up on you. This past week was a slow sneak into a full on bum rush.

Good reasons and bad.

One of the good ones was that my niece sent me a lovely note thanking me for something I did at Mom's service. Some of you might remember I had to apologize to her after Dad's service for being an absolute bitch so the thank you made me feel like I hadn't fucked it up again. Grief is a valid reason for not acting like yourself, but it's still a miserable excuse for hurting someone else who is grieving along with you. This time I didn't. Whew.

Another reason was this book I started reading. I talked about it on Facebook. It was a really good book. I'm really glad I read it. But...(spoiler alert if you are going to read Maybe You Should Talk to Someone you might want to skip ahead)...I'll wait.

Spoiler section: 

So, it's a book about a therapist and one of her patients is dying. She has cancer. Now, she's very young, it's not the type of cancer Mom had, it's completely different. But...it's the same. Cancer is like grief. It's always different, it's always the same. So anytime she would touch on this woman's story and sessions it was rough. There are other really rough sections as well. You are basically in therapy with four different people and it's brilliant and...anyway...it was rough. I cried a lot. Then today...

Well, I thought it was bad until today. Today we reached the end of her life. She was tired of being sick. Tired of dying. So she stopped eating. Yep. Just like Mom. I had to put my Kindle down, take my glasses off, and just sob. I haven't cried that hard since I got the first call from Susan that Mom had decided to die. It was the type where you hurt afterward, physically hurt, because it's such a wrenching sob.

It was beautiful though. The book, the end, the choice. It was all really beautiful. But man it hurt.

END OF SPOILER SECTION!

Right after Mom died there was an ad in my feed for a Christmas ornament. It's a sparkly owl. It was just so Mom that it took my breath away a little. I tried to find it last week and couldn't and then it popped back up in my feed and I realized I had been looking at the wrong company. So I ordered it. It came yesterday and I haven't been able to open the box yet. I know what's in it. I know that I am going to love it. I know that I really wanted it. But I can't. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow. Or next week.

So yeah, the first year is the hardest. It's all still really fresh. You haven't figured out just yet how you are going to deal with it on the daily. You have really long stretches of just fine followed by not at all fine. This has been a not at all fine week.

It's all part of the cycle of grief. Perfectly normal. Perfectly fine. Then really hard sometimes.

For three months since I got the Mom's dying call I think it's all as good as it can be.

The first year just sucks.