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Is The Death Anniversary Easier Nine Years Out?

As I sit in my living room on the eve of Justin’s ninth death anniversary, I find myself wondering: has it gotten any easier? 

The short answer is HELL NO! But because I feel like I owe it to my followers and supporters to be transparent about my grief journey, I cannot give a short answer today. 

And that’s because, in some ways, it is easier. I would think that to anyone who’s recently lost a spouse or child or sibling or best friend or parent, that might give you hope. 

Why should that give you hope?

Doesn’t the anniversary getting easier signify that my love for Justin has faded? Doesn’t it mean that I miss him less, think about him less, and grieve him less? 

No! It definitely does not. 

After nine years, I still cry a lot. I still think about him every day. I still find myself wondering what life would look like if he was still here. I still hurt and I still love him. 

Don't mistake the word "easier" for "easy"

I never said it was “easy,” I just said easier. There are plenty of reasons for that, one of them being time. Even though I do not believe in the sentiment, “time heals all wounds,” I do think it helps. 

Think about it like a scar. Some wounds are too deep and severe to ever properly heal. No matter how well you care for that wound, it will turn into a scar. And no matter how much bio-oil, olive oil, or coconut oil you put on that scar, it will always be a scar. 

Grief is just like that scar on our hearts, minds, emotions, and souls. And just like that scar, our grief fades a little over time because time helps us carry it better. 

Taking good care of our grief wounds

What if we never bandaged that wound or washed it? It would get pretty funky and eventually, it would kill us. I think grief is the same. 

Just like a physical injury, we must properly care for this emotional wound. If we don’t, we will not learn to carry our grief better over time. Instead, we will find ourselves ten years down the road staring at an older face with a heart that’s frozen in time. 

Some days, my heart still feels frozen. Some moments, my grief is so intense that banging my head against the wall would be a welcomed relief. 

But, unlike in the early days, my urge to itch this scratch has lessened because of one major difference — perspective. 

I've tasted joy again

I’ve done my fair share of savoring my grief and I’m glad to say that, I prefer joy to pain.

Just like our joy can include moments of stress, anxiety, and fear. Our grief can include moments of joy, laughter, and pleasure. 

I’ve learned to embrace the joy with the grief while realizing they will always take up equal space in my heart. 

Call them my widowed perspective. 

Justin’s death anniversary will always be hard because it’s a deafening reminder of the most traumatic day of my life. It’s also a massive pill to swallow upon realizing how much life he has missed. 

Another reason why it's gotten easier

I miss him hard, and I always will. I certainly don’t need a specific day to “miss him” on because, to me, every day is hard. 

Unlike almost everyone else (excluding his immediate family), I live the death anniversary all year long. 

Every day is a day he’s missing. Every day is a day he’s dead. Every day is a day his son doesn’t know him. Every day is a day I cannot hear his voice or hug him or listen to him play guitar. 

Every single day is like a death anniversary to me and that makes days like today a little bit easier. 

For a deeper dive into death anniversaries and how to navigate them, grab a copy of my book here
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My book is LIVE!

It's finally here!

I cannot begin to explain how many hours, years, and months I dreamed of this moment — author status.

Even though I truly only started writing this particular book about a year ago, it's been a constant ache in my heart for quite a while.  This book was my first book idea, even if I knew I would not be ready to write it for quite some time. 

I grew a lot during widowed years one, two, three, four, and beyond, but I don't think I was truly ready to write this book until I reached a turning point in my life. 

This book is truly everything I wanted to read as a new widow. I was angry but looking for hope. I wanted hope to exist but was skeptical. 

I didn't believe in a silver lining, still don't. But I did believe in joy. How could I not after having experienced it for all of my life? 

Up until I became a widow, I never knew what true darkness was — until I did. 

If you are in the trenches of grief, I know how you feel. I don't like saying that phrase to anyone because I truly believe we all feel something unique.

But just like falling in love, losing love must feel pretty comparable — it's miserable on top of gross on top of horrible on top of sucky and shitty. It's all the horrible feelings stacked on top of each other.

And even though these horrible feelings tend to stick around for life, they do get more tolerable and manageable with time. If you're wondering HOW? Order my book and see for yourself.

I don't promise you that you'll feel any or much relief at first, but my hope is that you may start to believe that ONE DAY, it's possible.

Buy my book here

And here

My IVF Journey

The retrieval

Until my October transfer, I was what the IVF community calls —a poor responder. The average number of eggs retrieved in IVF is 8 to 14, and I got 5.

But I was excited for the chance of 5 embryos. If all of them made it to blastocyst, we would freeze them and be able to have 5 chances of conceiving without having to do another egg retrieval. But when we got the call, only 1 made it to blastocyst.

The transfer

This one embryo meant that I had one chance of becoming pregnant, and if it failed, we’d have to spend the same amount of money (15k) and go through the same emotional roller coaster for another “chance.”

 

The success rates for conceiving through IVF during your first cycle are 33%. On average, it takes up to 3 cycles to conceive during IVF. But even with those statistics, there are no guarantees. 

Don and I considered doing another retrieval to get one or maybe two more embryos to freeze and store away. But it was expensive, and Don said, “We only want one more child; let’s just go for it and see what happens.” 

On October 20, 2021, we transferred our little miracle and waited.

The result

There’s a 14-day wait when conceiving naturally or through IUI. But after transferring a 5-day embryo, it takes 7 to 8 days for implantation, which means you can test on day 8 or 9.

Because I’d been trying to conceive for 3 years now, I had a plethora of pregnancy tests under my bathroom sink. Don wanted me to wait for my blood test on day 9, which would give us an actual number instead of just a positive or a negative.

I promised Don I’d wait; he really wanted me to. But in the afternoon of day 8, I found myself staring at a negative pregnancy test. I know you’re supposed to wait like 5 minutes before you look at the result, but I never do, and I’ve always looked right away. This time was no different, and I looked saw one line and then quickly crumbled while tossing it into the trash. 

About 30 minutes later, I started scrolling through my IVF Facebook group where other women had two lines, but one was faint. I rushed back to the bathroom, retrieved my test from the trash, and noticed a soft blue line was there.

That afternoon, I went to the store and purchased a digital test. No way was I going to put all of my hope in a faint blue line. But when I got home with the test, Don was around, and he spotted the test in my bag.

“What is that?” He said in a panic. “You promised you’d wait,” he yelled, snatching the test from the bag.

After a lot of begging and pleading, he gave it back to me. When I emerged from the bathroom and showed him the big fat POSITIVE, he smiled with hesitation.

“I still want to wait on that blood test tomorrow before getting excited,” he said. But of course, we had the day to process the news and understandably got a little bit excited.

The Scare

Nine hours later, right before climbing into bed, I started hyperventilating at the sight of bright red blood. When the embryo implants, women can have implantation bleeding. But it’s never supposed to be red, and it’s never supposed to gush like a period. I called Don into the bathroom while crying my eyes out, and we both knew it was all over.

I cried myself to sleep that night.

The next day, I went in for my blood test as initially planned. I had little hope, I knew my blood test would be positive, but I also knew it might not be accurate. 

When I told Terri, my midwife, about the blood, she told me not to worry. She said it defiantly could mean a chemical pregnancy, but it might still be alright.

The roller coaster

Did you know that there is such a thing as being a little bit pregnant? I used to think you’re pregnant or you’re not. But this is not the case.

The HCG blood test measures the amount of HCG (pregnancy hormone) in your blood. If you hit a 5 or above, you’re technically pregnant. But a 5 is considered very, very low. You need to be in the ’20s or ’30s for a viable pregnancy in the IVF community, and even that number isn’t the greatest. 

In IVF, many clinics do 3 pregnancy tests over a span of days. As long as the first test is positive, the HCG (or beta) number should double or increase by at least 60 % over 48 hours. If the number isn’t growing at this rate, it can usually indicate a chemical (early miscarriage) or an ectopic (when the embryo implants in the tubes) pregnancy. 

My betas

My first number was great: 296. But I still lacked confidence knowing my number wouldn’t have decreased that much if I’d already lost the baby. 

My second number wasn’t great: 522. Because I took my first test on a Friday, we had to wait for 72, not 48 hours to test again. This number meant that my doubling rate was 87 hours, and that’s almost twice as long as it should take to double. 

My third test also wasn’t great: 817. This number meant that my doubling rate from tests 2 to 3 was 74 hours. 

By this point, my midwife was concerned. She told me we should brace ourselves for chemical or ectopic. I cried all day long. But to be cautious, we took one more test. 

I woke up on a Saturday with plans to call my midwife with the results at 9 am. I like to sleep in, but I promptly woke up at 7 am that day. For one hour, I waited while refreshing my email feed every 5 seconds or so. This was it; this was the test that would indicate if I would carry this child or prepare myself for another loss. 

At 8 am, my test results appeared in my inbox. 

My fourth beta test was a game-changer: 1949. My beta finally doubled in less than 48 hours. 

The heartbeat

After that incredible beta number, we had to wait another 2 weeks before seeing a heartbeat. Last year (before I miscarried), we saw the heartbeat at 6 weeks and then seven weeks. At seven weeks, the baby did not measure on track, which was an indicator of a possible miscarriage. There was no heartbeat by the time we returned for my 9-week scan.

This time around, we would see the heartbeat at six weeks and then not for another 2 weeks. I was nervous about this because of what happened last year, and I wanted to see the baby every week.

Don and I braced ourselves at the 6-week scan, and everything looked great and was measuring on track. But 4 days later, I felt anxious and wanted to see the baby before we left for our Thanksgiving trip. Then the worst happened, more blood. I texted my clinic that morning in tears. They said they would fit me in for another ultrasound that day. I had to wait 6 hours. I cried, screamed, and went to the dark side during that time. I just knew that, once again, it was all over.

A glimmer of hope

As you all know, it all turned out okay (so far). I saw a strong heartbeat. Then two weeks later, we were released from our fertility clinic and put in the hands of our OB, where we saw a beautiful growing baby. 

Today, I am 15 weeks long. I am aware of how fortunate we are to have gotten pregnant from our first IVF cycle or to have gotten pregnant at all. Some women try for years and never conceive, and some can’t even afford IVF. We are so thankful for the resources and support even to have this chance. 

Franky says "relax"

Even though I am grateful, I am also fearful. As a PTSD fighter, it’s hard to move through life with ease, and it’s tough to put faith in the unknown. 

When Justin died, I thought my chances of having another child died with him until I found Don. 

When the last baby died, I thought our chances of having another child died with them until we found IVF. 

We appreciate your prayers and well wishes as we wait on baby Hogg to join us on this earth. 

Was it all for nothing?

The day after Justin died, I felt like the past ten years of my life were for all for nothing. I was angry that I’d invested so much energy into my marriage, and just like that, it disappeared.

Everything was a waste: every kiss we shared, every gift we exchanged, every vacation we went on, every song we wrote, and every single memory we created was all for nothing.

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I didn’t understand why God would give me ten years to build a marriage, prepare for motherhood, grant me a child, and then take away my husband. It was like I’d been given the worst backhanded compliment in history.

For a very long time, I locked away my past. I told myself it was best if I just turned my back on my memories. All they did was make me sad.

 

When happy memories turn to sad

When you lose your greatest love, it turns all of your happy moments sad. I never thought I’d find any shred of happiness again or any content in this terrible life I was now living. 

But as time moved forward, so did I. And slowly but surely, I started letting the bits and pieces of my splintered life back in. I decided that I could either let those years be for nothing or make them stand for something. Something more extensive than a typical marriage. Something bigger than I could have ever envisioned.

Instead of viewing my life as a loss, I began viewing it as a gift. Justin was the unlucky one in our partnership. He only lived 33 years, and it pains me as I type those words now. It distresses me when I think of his smile, laughs, and swagger. I’ll never experience his magnificent presence on this earth again, and no words can describe how crappy that feels.

 

Living his legacy

But unlike him, I was not gone, and I still had so much living to do. To shackle myself to his grave would solve nothing and I owed him more than my pain.

I owed him and our son our memories.

If you feel like your life was a waste or just thrown out like yesterday’s trash, your feelings are justified. It’s natural to feel this way when we’ve lost the one thing in life we were sure of — love.

 



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But, I also want you to know that your love and your relationship were there for a reason. They gave you love and happiness during a specific time in life. Even though that time doesn’t seem like enough, unfortunately, for you, it will have to be.

We all have to find our purpose in the loss. I will never justify mine. I will never say, “it was meant to be, or I’m happy with Don now, so it was all okay.” NOPE, you will never hear me speak those words.

Finding happiness again is possible, even if it means never finding love again. I had to find joy in myself before finding Don. I had to appreciate my journey and realize that mine is just a little bumpier than some. 

@jensholm Unsplash

Feeling Stuck in Your Grief

After Justin died, I went to grief counseling, where I was taught the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

My counselor told me that it might take some time, but the ultimate goal was to make it to the acceptance stage. He said once I got there, I could create a living memorial for Justin. He told me that while the goal is to make it to acceptance, it’s possible to get stuck in one of the other phases forever. He said that if I didn’t do the work, that could happen to me.



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Stage two: Anger

I remember sitting on his poofy leather sofa while he tried to prepare me for how I would and should feel. The room was cold, and there was a picture of the ocean framed on the wall. His words were supposed to bring me hope; I was paying him to provide that for me, to give me all the answers.

But my pain consumed me. This man didn’t lose the love of his life. What the hell does he know about grief? He’s making money off of my distress; how dare he! The longer I sat and listened, the more furious I became.

Then he asked me something: “How are you feeling right now?” He said.

“Honestly? I’m a little pissed off,” I responded.

“Anger,” he said back.

I couldn’t believe it; he was right. I was angry at my husband for dying and the man who killed him for destroying my life. I was mad at my baby for waking me up at 4 a.m. and my mom for asking me if I would get out of bed that day. It didn’t matter what situation was put before me; it made me mad.

Getting stuck in your grief

As it turned out, my counselor knew what he was talking about. It was a while before I pulled myself from the anger phase, but eventually, I did. And once I did, it felt good to let go of the hate.

While learning about grief, my counselor also told me that, even though you might move into the acceptance stage, you will have moments when you revisit the other stages.

After seven years, I still get angry (anger) and depressed (depression) sometimes. I still find myself shaking my head, wondering — how did this happen (bargaining). I still get knots in my stomach when I realize I’ll never speak to Justin again (denial).

Acceptance means never fully accepting it

Even though I revisit these stages of grief, I am not stuck in them. This is something that I wish people understood about grief. Just because you have a bad moment, day, or week, it doesn’t mean you’re stuck in your grief. It doesn’t mean that you’re living an unhealthy life of sadness and depression. It doesn’t mean that you are so distraught that you need to be in daily counseling. It means you are human and that you will never fully accept that your loved one is gone because it’s too damn hard.