One Year Anniversary of Jim's Death

Jim died March 6, 2012 so this month I have  bumped up against the one-year anniversary.  I planned several things to bring my family together - a Mass and a meal - and thanks to a snow storm those plans were interrupted  - but we flexed and things worked out.

There was nothing easy about it.
For one thing it does not seem like a year. Somehow my perception of time has changed. Instead of stretching out it seems to contract.  Days shrink.

I don't know what I thought the year-end would bring. If I expected to be out of the woods and moving on - I was rediculously misguided. How could I have thought that after 58 years I could just shake myself and go on. It isn't that easy.

Some days or nights I ache for Jim to be here with a greater pain than I felt in the beginning. Now that is something that most books I have read agree on - the later days are harder than the earlier. I guess the fog I have been living in also blocks the reality and hurt.

But I am managing. I am working hard to do the Federal Taxes for the first time, fortunately with help from my son and daughter.  My new one-woman show for the Capital Fringe this summer is really coming along and I am in the middle of a series of  "try outs" to practice it.

In April I am making a 10 day storytelling tour to SC and Ga/ I will be featured at a Storytelling Festival and then tell three one-person shows - all different - in three cities.  I am excited - and scared.

After a successful House Concert try-out last week-end I felt so alone without Jim being there. He and I always talked over a performance afterwards - identifying where it was going well and then tweaking spots that needed work. Fortunately my friends who had hosted the performance worked it over with me next morning. But it was a warning. My storytelling trip is not going to be a walk-in-the-park. I have to prepare for that.

Something is missing. And, at this one year milestone I painfully know that Jim will always be missing.

In closing I want to recommend two books that have been helpful.

Don't Take My Grief Away  is the first book I found that really spoke to me in a human and kind way about what I was living through and with. It is written in fairly simple conversational style which I needed in the early days because I could not fully concentrate on anything I was reading.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion was a challenge. Much has been written about it as a personal look at the process of loss and grief. And it is. But I could not read it until about three weeks before the one-year anniversary. I tried two times getting no futher than the 2nd or 3rd chapter. I just was not ready to hear what she was saying until last month. That may be just me.

Both have something to offer.