Salmoneus wrote:My sympathies. Someone close to me was bereaved a bit over a year ago, so I've gotten to see a lot of what follows, if only from the outside. They'd seem to be doing better until a birthday or an anniversary or a holiday came along and they'd be dropped right back in it. I hope you're doing okay. If it's any consolation, I think it's the first anniversary of everything that's the worst.
That seems logical--if you've gotten through it once, naturally you can do it again, right? But every anniversary is different. There's a lot else going on in your life that can affect your reactions. (I've been joking that my parents have to hold off dying for at least a year, since I don't think I could fend off another blow so soon.) And--as Patton Oswalt has observed--grief is insidious. You think you know when it's going to strike, so you steel yourself for those moments. And so it finds another way in. (Oswalt tells the story of being reduced to sobs by finding an old text message. I've had a similar experience--but not with an old text message, because he warned me about that one.)
Salmoneus wrote:One positive thing the person I know did was to have a sort of small private ceremony about a year later, after the first of everything - for scattering the ashes. I think they put it off so long just because they couldn't face it any earlier, but it actually worked out pretty well - I think it's had a sort of closure effect, like it's the end of the initial mourning process.
I did feel some closure after the scattering ceremony. (We did it on the 99th day after death so there was at least a chance the weather wouldn't be godawful.) But then over the past month I've gotten fragile again. I thought it might be because of anniversaries (not just his birthday but also of the two surgeries which eventually led to his demise), but I won't really know until I'm over it.
I'm kind of a morbid person in general so morbidity doesn't really bother me.
I think the reason the spiritual reassurance gets under my skin is that I joined the group for some concrete advice and support: What practical things do I need to accomplish and how? What do you wish someone had told you when you were dealing with the funeral, with service providers, with work, with family, etc.? (I've gotten some terrific advice in all those areas from widows I know locally.) How do I know when my situation depression is becoming chronic? But, no, it's mostly pictures of sunsets and convos about how you tell whether your spirit medium is legit or not. [ProTip: They're all fake.]
It's also bothersome to see people who seem stuck and I don't know why. Latent fear I'll end up like that? As you guys say, I'm putting hard effort into dealing with the fact that dead is dead and all this fingers-in-the-ears horseshit about how you talk to your husband in the car and you know he hears you because sometimes the lights change at just! the! right! time! is irritating, even if it is metaphorical.