The Second Year

It is so hard for me to believe that in so many ways the second year really is more difficult than the first.  I know I've read that for some it could be.  I just could not see how that was possible.  And it isn't in all ways but in many ways, it definitely is and I'd like to talk about that.


While the crying and the melt downs in public places is better; the grim realization has set in that this is forever and in many ways this year is actually worse.  I am much more depressed.  The shock has worn off now completely and I now see that long after I'd thought it was gone, it had still been lingering, protecting, pushing me forward.  Long after I thought I was facing this full on and that I was at least in "mid-recovery", I was steeped in deep denial; glossing over it, covering it up with "busy" and pretending.  Busy has come to a screeching halt and now I can't muster enough strength or energy or wherewithal to be busy no matter how hard I try - which by the way is not very hard.  I just don't care anymore.  If I could just sit and eat dinner on a TV tray in front of the television, read an hour, sit in a tub of hot water and then lay in bed and play solitaire on my Kindle till I get sleepy - I'd be good.  That would be my perfect evening.  Oh wait, that is my every evening.  But sooooooo not like my evenings "before".  Never been a big TV fan.  Maybe an hour in the evening to wind down was about my max.  It just always seemed like a major time suck and I always had far too much to do to justify very much TV for all of the housework, cooking, laundry, family time, pets, church, writing and I could never find time to stay ahead of it all. And all of those still exist but suddenly they are all so terribly unimportant.  I can sit for hours and binge-watch ten year old episodes of Alias without feeling a twinge of guilt at the pile of laundry I tripped over to get to the television. Dishes in the sink - fine.  Bathrooms need cleaning - so what.  Floors looking like you need to run the mower and grass catcher - I'm good.  Nothing seems important me anymore.  Everything except family seems like petty annoyances.  I have zero desire to actually "do" anything.  I can barely find enough energy to function on a low level and get by from day to day. 


In the beginning I couldn't think about these things and I was in the middle of caretaking and doing what I could for the living - postponing grief as it turns out .  Just getting from one day to the next the best I could.  This year that is no longer the case but you still have to have a reason to get up and I have no reason.  No hope.  No purpose.  I don't want to "do" anything anymore.  I think I need that puppy now or a donkey or something.  (Latest book - Flash) Whatever - but I need a reason to go on.


The second year is harder too simply because it is the second year and I thought if I could make it through the horror of the first - I would have "made it."  I would be better.  I would want life again.  I would be able to see good in things again.  I would have energy and hope and faith again.  I would be out of the danger zone.

Not so much.

Last year when I first started this blog it had been "Four Weeks" - the blog was a life vest to a drowning man.  Now...well I am floating adrift.  I don't need a life vest but I'm still in the water.  I'm not drowning but this is not living either.

Last year I had "coping skills" - this year now I'm contemplating drugs in order to make it.  What a hypocrite.  I thought if you just kept pushing on and forcing yourself to function, ignored the pain, pretended the holidays were not holidays, kept the kids alive and with me through happy stories, funny memories, pictures and videos.  If I read all the books, attended the right meetings, listened to the preaching, listened to the right music, talked to a counselor, wrote out my feelings and managed to cling to life by tooth and toenail and just make it past that magic one year mark - I would be "out of the woods".  The reality has hit me like a brick that not only is it not true that I will be okay after the first year but in fact that I will never be okay again.

Losing them did not change the number of chairs at my Thanksgiving dinner table or how many gifts I would buy at Christmas or how I spent my Sunday afternoons.  Losing them --changed everything.  Absolutely everything.  Not everything for a year or two years or five years but forever.

I don't even recognize this life.  I had goals, hopes, dreams and a strong abiding faith.  My whole life, those were the things that kept me going.  I truly do not understand how this can make me no longer be me?  I am not me.  God is not God.  Everything is just wrong.  And these are the things that I did not know last year.  I guess I couldn't face it or didn't realize it or God knew I couldn't withstand the full impact of all of that yet.  I guess it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other and remember to breath.  And yeah the first year was horrific and yet in many ways the second is still kind of worse as you come to the cold realization that the horror is never going to end.

Coping skills...

I just read a post on a blog that I follow about social drinking.  And while she was, neither for or against it she was observing the message that it sends to our children. 

I thought to myself how I could write her a book on that because no one knows what social drinking and alcoholism can do to children any more than I do. 

I grew up in an alcoholic home.  All Holidays as well as vacations and most weekends centered around drinking.  Both my parents were alcoholics and neither were what you’d call “fun drunks”.  (I used to wonder "what kind of person even coined that phrase anyway?") 

My mother was a "sleepy drunk".  Two sips and she fell over right where she sat.  If she happened to be at the table she did a "gravy plant" right into her Thanksgiving dinner. This makes for some interesting dinner conversation when you have friends over...

My father, on the other end of the spectrum, was a “mean drunk” that never slept.  Alcohol had the exact opposite effect on him.  It had a kind of amphetamine effect on him and two sips would have him bouncing off the walls and when daddy didn’t sleep – nobody slept.  One - he wouldn’t let you and two - you were afraid to close your eyes around him.   He liked to entertain himself by threatening us with loaded guns when he drank. 

My father was killed in a car accident at 46.  And my mother thankfully quit drinking at 50 years old. After she quit  I asked her once why she became an alcoholic.  She told me that she didn’t set out to become an alcoholic - no one did.  She just started having a social drink with friends; then progressed to having a drink because she had had a bad day; then on to drinking on the weekend because she’d had a hard week and then just one to help her relax and then to medicate herself because of troubles that the drinking caused and then she just woke up one day and…there she was.

Because of that candid conversation I have always been very cautious of social drinking.  So I just don’t.  Not because I believe it is a horrible sin or that you will go to Hell for drinking a mixed drink or having a beer with the guys but because I am now aware that no one sets out to become an alcoholic – you just wake up one day –and there you are.  I am also keenly aware of the fact that alcoholism, drug abuse and addictive behavior runs in families.  

I also remember what my life was like as a child and was determined never to give my children the kind of life I prayed every day to get out of. 

I think today along with alcoholism we have a far worse problem with an entire generation of people that medicate their lives away with prescription drugs.   The problem with that is that because it was prescribed by a doctor – that somehow makes it ok and they do not even see it as a problem.  Antidepressants, Sleep Aids, Pain Killers, Muscle Relaxants, Anti-anxiety drugs are all handed out like M&Ms.  And they are wrecking lives; innocent lives because like alcohol – it is ruining the lives of everyone around them not just the ones taking the drug.  And the pharmaceutical companies and unethical doctors are no better than the drug dealers on the streets because like the drug dealers they are in it for the money.

I cannot name five people that I know that are not on something. 

What happens to our future generations when no one learns how to deal with the normal problems of life, or a little minor physical discomfort or the normal stresses of illness, grief or sadness – but instead rush to the doctor because "there's a pill for that"? 

My sister is dealing with Leukemia, chemo therapy, bone marrow transplant and the many issues that causes.  She is afraid to cry and exhibit emotions because the nurses  keep asking her if she is depressed?  “Let us know if you are because we can prescribe something for you.”  Of course she is depressed!  Anyone in her shoes would be depressed.  That is not a chemical imbalance – that is a normal reaction to what she is going through. 

Everyone I talk to asks me if I have been to the doctor to get “something to help me sleep; something for my nerves; something to help me cope; something for depression?” 

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I am not against medication when you need it.  But I lost three members of my family; my youngest child; my daughter in law and the baby that I absolutely adored.  Many days I wonder if I will be able to go on. Many days – I don’t even want to. The loss is so great and the pain so deep until I wonder how I will survive it. But the loss was real – not imagined.  I’m grieving. This is a normal reaction to such a loss.  Covering it over with pills will not make it magically go away.  It will not bring them back or lessen my pain more than temporarily.  For my life to go on I need to face this and I need to learn to cope with the reality that I now have – I’m kind of thinking medicating it will only add to my problems.  They will still be gone and I will have a drug dependency to go along with the loss.  Just saying…