June 8 would have been 13 years of marriage. It is the 5th anniversary without my husband. Odd how the experience of that date changes.
The first year…. I remember the agony of anticipating experiencing our youngest son’s 2nd birthday,Father’s day and our wedding anniversary all for the first time without him and of course all in the month of June. June was always a rough month.
Same with October, which represents birthdates for my husband and I and our oldest son all close in proximity to the date of his death. October remains awful even after five years. The clocks fall back, the darkness comes at the torturous time of 4 pm, warmth of summer switches to that cold aloneness of fall and those awful smells….those triggering smells of the seasons changing. I still find myself aiming to run away in October. If it is affordable and possible, then a little carefully planned getaway allows for positive things to focus on and a little forward momentum while the tornado of a death anniversary rolls through the calendar.
October=beyond challenging, but this year June changed. For better or for worse, I don’t know. Years one, two and three without my sweetheart here to celebrate an anniversary I felt the need to run away. Years 4 and 5, I didn’t feel like I had to leave the state and set out on adventure.
The amazing man I still love with every fiber of my being isn’t here. My love for him and my longing for him never changes, but that angry, bitter part of me feels like counting up the years that would have been is starting to feel like such a wasted effort. June 8 little by little becomes more like a regular day on the calendar in June. Sure it was a day 5 years ago that marked the most wonderful blessing and start of the marriage I had longed for all my life, but there is something that feels kinda depressing about marking the date with comments like “well, we would have had 13 years together.” yippee…those 13 years only exist in a place of imaginary longing in my heart, not in reality. So why give a lot of energy to a date that can’t be celebrated by adding on another married year? I guess I am not sure where I stand on this subject.
It tends to represent a very annoying and hollow sort of reminder that something as amazing as our wedded bliss on this earth for whatever reason wasn’t meant to last more than 8 calendar years. I hate that. My hating of that fact hasn’t changed in the last 5 years, but perhaps my numbness or guardedness toward that date has changed. Perhaps letting the date fade back into a mindset of a regular ol’ day in June is just another strategy I have used to cope. Nothing has changed about my feeling of unfairness and confusion, but I can at least report some positive improvement in the faith department since those first few widowed anniversaries.
How do anniversaries change for you over the years?
In Hope & Prayers,
From This Widow Mama
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