Widowhood

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

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. 

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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.

 

Nursing my Infant in the Midst of Death

Breastfeeding — it’s how we feed our infants when their bodies are still shifting from the womb to the world. It’s often debated about, gawked at, and frowned upon when done in public. But, it’s nature and motherhood in their most natural state. 

My breastfeeding story is different than most.

I didn’t struggle to produce milk, and my infant latched on just fine (with a nipple shield for the first month). I wasn’t forced to pump and go back to a job. I was able to stay home with my son and nurse him on demand. 

Instead of dealing with these struggles, I mourned my husband. I cried every 5 minutes and wondered why God made me a widow with an infant. I envied moms who complained about common postpartum issues. 

The night Justin died, I got no sleep.

Mom and I sat in two recliners and stared at the ceiling tiles. Jax cried all night long. I can’t remember how many times I nursed him that night because mom would just bring him to me and stick him on my boob. Before Jax was born, I was so excited to breastfeed. It was something that I took very seriously. But the night of Justin’s death, I was ready to quit. The task seemed too large. 

But then, two days later, something happened.

I realized that my son needed me and, even more so, I needed him. I decided to make nursing him my short-term goal. Instead of looking at it as an impossible task, it became my purpose. God spared me so my body could nourish this child. So that’s what I did. 

I breastfed Jax for 20 months. To some, that might seem too long, but for us, it was normal. I’ll admit, it was hard to stop because nursing him, somehow, made me feel close to Justin. 

Bonus Story

Eventually, I did have to pump and go back to work. But I wasn’t pumping in an office, I was pumping in an SUV while 1,000 music fans waited for my band to return from a break. That’s right; I pumped on tour. That’s an entirely different story for next year.