Today marks the one year anniversary of my mother’s death.

What a strange phrase, what a strange feeling. Sounds contradictory: anniversary of death. A word that resonates with positive celebration, followed by cruel finality.

Still, this is a milestone. A year. The first year.

Reading “The Year of Magical Thinking,” I came across the author’s description of how, for that first entire year, she often asked herself what the deceased had done on that same day the year before.

I found it funny because I did that too.

I would stop to remember how we celebrated her last birthday, our last trip together in the US, our last summer, a conversation I had with her on the date of my grandmother’s death, skype calls on the kids’ birthdays, and so on and so forth. I did that instinctively, and it seemed to bring me closer to her, to a moment in my life in which she was still THERE.

Now, this marker of such cruelty serves as a reminder of what will never be. Poe’s raven, croaking “nevermore.”

From now on, all my “LAST” years will forever be years WITHOUT her.

I’ll be forced to remember that “last” year, whatever last year it is, she wasn’t doing anything, she wasn’t here, we didn’t celebrate her birthday, there was no call from her on the kids’ birthdays either. She was gone.

“Nevermore.”

 

Because of this rationale, I feared (oh how I feared!) this anniversary. For the past weeks I have lived in deep anxiety, fully aware that the day was approaching, and dreading that, from now on, time has forever changed.

Now, I tell time in grief-years. I like that term. I’ll coin it.

GRIEF-YEARS.

I can see myself saying things such as:

“Five years after my mother died…” or,

“I remember when such and such happened. It was X years before my mom died.”

I know this because time is something slippery, tricky, ever-changing. It is human nature to time our lives around milestones and major events. Weddings, relocations, becoming a parent, death. Things that leave profound marks in us, in our lives, and alter how we recount our personal stories, our time here.

So, I feared the fateful one-year mark. But it came, as I knew it would, with its unforgiving echo of “nevermore.”

Still, I stand.

Wet cheeks, no doubt, but I still stand. Emptier than a year before, more fragile, with deeper cracks in my soul, forever changed and forever incomplete. Yet, I stand.

Yes, time has changed. I miss her. Pure and simple. I still need her, and I miss her.

As I stand on this new starting point, a step leading down the path of “nevermore” towards what will become, I feel the ache. It is palpable. Permanent. Eternal.

As is “nevermore.”

Still, I stand.

How did YOU deal with any grief in YOUR life? 
Or how do you think you will, when it comes to visit you? 
Let me know, I've heard that healing comes from sharing.#MIGHTYAlba @lomartinsauthor