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5 Reasons Why My Grief Continues A Year After Losing My Mom
“I can’t just “get over” my grief at the first-anniversary mark.”
The first anniversary of my mom’s death is rapidly approaching. I cannot believe how it’s been a year already AND it’s been a year since I’ve talked to her.
I’m dreading it, to say the least.
I think that’s because we, as a society, expect people to wrap up their grief with a nice, tidy bow and store it away after a year.
“It’s been a year.”
“You’ve been through all the firsts.”
“It’s time to move on.”
“You’re still posting about it and talking about it?”
“You still get sad and angry?”
While I’ve come a long way in the healing process and my grief has morphed over time, it still is very much present.
I still have times when the grief hits me so hard that it takes my breath away, and I have trouble accomplishing anything.
Other times, I have hope, and I remember my mom with fondness.
But as the first year creeps closer, I’m finding some old, familiar feelings of grief starting to pop up again. Some that I thought I was finished with. One is the intense anger. And I’m starting to panic at the pressure that this should all be behind me by now.
However, I know that I’m not alone and that many people share the same sentiment that grief never ends and that the second year after the death of a loved one might actually be harder than the first year, if not the hardest.
Here are five reasons why I am starting to agree.
One Year Isn’t That Long
One year is not that long in the scheme of our lifetime. Some of us had to go a year or more without seeing our loved ones during Covid. I know of other people who have moved from a different continent who haven’t seen their families in years. Granted, they still could talk to one another, but my point is a year isn’t a long time.
You can kind of trick yourself into thinking that first year, “Oh, I’m just not going to see my mom this Christmas.”
