Reflecting on Five Years of Grief

Honestly, today - all day- what I kept thinking, was that I can't believe Brian has been dead for five whole years.

I can't believe I have been doing this alone for that long. I can't believe that this is my life. Five years feels like a huge milestone. And how does it still feel this hard?

I've gotten so much more used to this journey but some days, like today, it still all feels unbelievable.

I'm trying really hard not to ruminate about where I thought I'd be at the five year mark, when he first died...but I can't help reflecting a little bit on what I thought five years would look like vs. what it actually does.

Because deep, profound, traumatic grief is something we don't talk about in our culture, so we have no idea what to expect. And we often have wildly unrealistic expectation around what it will feel like. 

Bri died the night of March 25th, sometime after midnight. I often feel the weight of his death anniversary on both the 25th & the 26th. Last night, I was searching back on my phone & I found something absolutely wild...👇

Old voice notes I left for myself when I was in raw, early grief. Hours of them.

I had completely and entirely forgotten.

I listened in fascination, as I tidied and did the dishes before bed last night, made our daughter her lunch for school today - exactly five years after the last night I spent with my Bri before he died.

At one point, my mouth literally fell open, as I heard myself say:

“I bet in five years I will find these voice notes and listen back and I’ll be a novelty to myself. I’ll be wondering - what was she like? This person so early in her grief?”

And there I was, discovering & listening to those words, exactly five years later. And I was absolutely right, listening back - that early grief version of myself, she is a novelty to me.

And also, I know that for her, me now - five-years a widow Mira - I would be a novelty for her too.

I had expectations for what five-years post loss would look like.

And it’s hard not to feel like a failure sometimes, even though I know those expectations come from a society that doesn’t understand grief - one where it isn’t talked about openly or truthfully - so we end up internalizing wildly inappropriate projections for ourselves.

Here's my truth - At five years, I find myself grieving my life just as much as I am grieving him

I miss our home. I miss our group of friends, our couple friends. I miss the ease of my relationships with my family, it’s all dramatically changed. I miss our city.

These are all things I knew had to change after he died.

And yet, I miss it all, just the way it was.

I am tired. I am so, deeply tired. I am beaten down in a way I wasn’t in early grief.

I wish I had fallen apart more then, when people were listening. I wish I had wailed and screamed when everyone expected me to. I wish I had leaned on people when so many of them were still wanting me to lean.

But I was in shock and I didn’t. It was at least a year after he died until it started to sink in.

I miss my daughter at that age. She is talking and singing in the background of multiple voice notes and her sweet three-year-old voice is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. I feel like I missed out on years because of my trauma & grief.

And Bri, my love, of course I miss you. You were the centre of it all and I never really knew exactly how much.

Love you to infinity.

5 years. ♥︎