Another year gone. The beginning of yet another year without Ariella. 2025. The year she should be graduating from high school. The year she should be entering college. But. Another year closer to being reunited. Another year closer to no longer feeling the weight of my grief, to no longer trying to avoid landmines, to no longer feel like I am suffocating, to no longer having every happy moment tainted with sadness. I don’t want to die anymore. I realized that a while back. But sometimes the thought just brings such, sweet relief.
The new year. What most view as a fresh start, a blank slate, a time to start over and make positive changes is for me a time of dread, anxiety, anticipatory grief. We start hitting those awful anniversaries beginning in early February; diagnosis day, bone marrow transplant, transfer to the PICU, all leading to her death in May. As much as I try now to live in the moment, control what I can, find any small measure of happiness, my body will not let me forget the trauma endured during those months. It manifests in panic attacks, the shakes, headaches, nausea. I tend to be more emotional, the tears surprising me at their seeming randomness. I begin to engage less with people, with life. I pull away, retreat into my own, safe little bubble. Generally the anticipation of the dates is worse than the actual date and the next several months is just that, constant anticipation while I relive those horrific moments. Last year was the first time I suffered through those days alone and it was not pretty (you can read about it here: https://lifeafterchildloss.net/the-body-remembers/ , https://lifeafterchildloss.net/just-a-short-update/, https://lifeafterchildloss.net/hanging-by-a-thread/, https://lifeafterchildloss.net/im-breaking/ ). I won’t lie, I am terrified that I will find myself back in that dark place. I did come out of it and I know I will again, but it is a very frightening place to be. Please again, just bear with me as I have my ups and downs but don’t let me just disappear into the abyss.
2024 was a doozy. In most ways I was in the best place I had been since Ariella died. I have experienced happiness, been joyful. I looked forward to seeing what life was going to bring. Being optimistic was the rule rather than the exception. I was okay. But in other ways it was the hardest year yet. I haven’t shared everything in my life because not everything is just my story to tell, but it’s felt a bit disingenuous to leave out so much. I’m still not going to say a lot other than my marriage has ended and with the end of my marriage came the loss of the one person that remembers all the dates, that experienced the same exact loss, that knows what it was like because he was there too. The difficult days are that much harder when going through them alone (for the record, I do know I’m not alone, but it’s not the same as being with the person who shared the trauma).
I truly do not know what the next few months or even this year will bring. But I guess none of us knows what life will bring to us. And in the words of Judah and the Lion from the song “Beautiful Anyway” “That’s what makes this life so wonderfully awesome and horribly awful yet somehow it’s beautiful anyway.”