July 29th, 2016 Anger and Grief at Five Years 'Go rest on the mountain...'

 

This July 2^nd was the fifth anniversary of Derek’s death and today will be five years that we laid him to rest at Duncan Memorial, the same location where we started our marriage together almost 18 years ago. Life never prepares you for things like this, it’s not what you had written in your head when you were a little girl, saying I do to his proposal, walking down the aisle to say ‘I do’, buying your first house, having you first and second babies. Life seems amazing and nothing can touch you, but as we found out things can touch you. Life came shattering down around us.

With the passing of five years I have noticed some different phases of grief in my journey. Of course each person’s experience is different given the nature of the loss and their own life circumstances. I think in way’s you learn to live around your pain. Perhaps there are times and phases of grief where I feel I am in the thick of sorrow and pain, while at other times I feel that I have learning to live “around” the pain or alongside it. And sometimes I get thick in the anger that sorrows my grief, that seems to be a common one I fight with most as I see our boys grow and become young men that will never know their father the way they should and the amazing man that he was. That is a hard part for me, as time does help the raw pain that comes with grief, it never goes away, and you don’t just get back that piece of you that died with them. You learn to live with it and build a life to live in this world that they were taken from way too soon.

You find you are ok and happy and it is an all new kind of happy. You look at things, life and people differently then you did in the past. Most of the time you look at them in a more deep caring way and then other times you want to shake them and scream “wake up and know how blessed you are” yes it is a crazy world.