Reflections on the Second Year of Grief

Today is an empty day, like innumerable days before. My spirit is brittle and harsh and gray. The tsunami of grief and words that once consumed me has now exiled me in a wasteland of depression and anxiety. On many days I am "fine" and can live my life in a way that keeps most people from recognizing that I am just going through the motions, but I barely visit my son’s grave or listen to his songs or look at his photos because it is just too painful. Instead, I sit numbing and flipping and scrolling and eating. I am stuck. I am mute. I cannot write.

The weight of depression is manageable enough to barely function and heavy enough that I can’t breathe.

Everything I read, the conversations with the other broken mothers I know -- they all said the second year of grief was worse. Who could possibly believe that when you are barely surviving year one? And yet, here I am.  

The first year of grief was a forest fire, a raging inferno. It completely absorbed the landscape of my life. It flattened me with its intensity and power. Now in my second year, I live in the devastation left by the fire. I navigate a barren landscape. Everything feels dead. Even the scientific knowledge that a forest fire brings regeneration and new life feels hollow. As of yet there is no apparent growth in the charred debris.

The first year of grief was a tidal wave. It crashed in, all momentum and motion. I was instantly swept away and could barely breathe as I surrendered to its churning power. It engulfed me and altered everything about life as I knew it. But, there was activity and there were decisions to make and there was mourning to do.

The months were shrouded in a dismal vibrancy that was tragic but had a progression: the first year was an arc of survival from the day we lost him until the anniversary of that terrible day.

And somehow there were words. Words flowed from me bringing purpose and healing and the promise of meaning and significance from the dark days. But then the darkness grew doubly dark.

A flat, hopeless depression arrived in year two. Stillness without peace. I missed the passion of the forest fire and the tsunami -- they were destructive but at least they felt alive. They forced me to react and respond. The second year was an endless expanse of emptiness without purpose or promise.

The deepest darkness is the discouraging reality that since my love for my son will never change, the agony of his loss will not either.

This all may sound a bit dramatic; I would probably have thought so before it became my life. But I don’t want to be afraid to tell the truth. Grief’s impact slammed into me. It had a trajectory that led me to rage. And there, after rage, the place I found myself was full of edgy anxiety on the loud days, bottomless sorrow on the quiet days, and on the worst days, despair.

Looking back, I think most people in my day to day life would have found that surprising. I assure you, I didn’t hide deliberately, but frankly, grief was tiresome and often I was tiresome to myself. As much as I needed support and understanding, in order to survive, I needed to just pretend to be normal sometimes. Many times, “fake it till you make it” worked and I enjoyed hours or days of relief from the wasteland and found peace and contentment and even joy in my life and with my family.

But part of the heaviness of Year Two was the growing realization that the weight of loss I carried was not in fact going to get easier or smaller or ever go away. I knew it would change. I knew I would change. One benefit was that my depression demanded isolation and that helped me process and accept the reality of just how drastically my heart and the landscape of my life had changed. Forever. And to grieve that too.

There is a line between healthy and un-healthy depression and anxiety in grief. I moved across that line regularly, but finally putting words to the darkness illuminated it enough to keep me on the bright side a little longer each day. I found a rhythm as I integrated grief more fully into my life.

Depression and anxiety invited me to self-compassion and radical acceptance of my own story.

I practiced not judging myself for how much I still hurt or for how little I got done. My faith convicted me that I was never alone, even in the bleakest moments, and that hope was always the anchor of my soul. It is still a surprise that my son, John Paul Raphael, feels as alive to me as the day he was born. I thought his memory would fade like the festive intensity of Ralph’s and my wedding reception. I am so grateful I was wrong.

I feel him here breathing on my chest. I hope someday that brings me comfort and agony, not just agony. I trust that my sweetest baby lives with the Lord and that in ways I cannot see or understand, our love for each other transcends all boundaries and thus lives on; that the magnitude of my grief comes from the enormity of that love; and that with God’s grace these charred sufferings will someday birth a new forest within me.

I miss you, baby. Let yourself be loved.