I last saw Ruby 11 years ago. She was 11 when she died and so I will soon be without her longer than we were together. As can be the way with grief, certain dates and times get lodged in memory whether you want them to or not and they can be hard to shake. For example, on a particularly low day not long after Ruby died in 2013, at aged 11 years and 237 days, I worked out the exact date when Tom would be at that same age- 1st August 2022. In hindsight, thinking rationally, it was a terrible idea. For years I hoped the date would dissipate from my memory but it was tattood into my mind forever and so the weeks leading up to August 2022 were some of the toughest yet.
In those earlier years after 2013 my grief timeline was like a mountain range- up and down, up and down, peaks and valleys of no clear discernable timeframe, grief may hit hard for a day then dissapear for days, then return for a week or longer then there would be weeks of stability then mabye an awful month and so on back and forth. There were noticable periods that were harder than others, particularly difficult weeks within a month, low months within a year, even years that were recognisably harder than other years.
Normal life gets in the way, of course, influencing my bereavement "process" and I failed to take that into account for years. My other relationships with Tom, with Claire, with friends, family and work colleagues, the ebbs and flows of my job, my own interests and joys and setbacks and dissapointments and achievements all play an influential part in my own grief. Maybe this is fairly usual for other grieving parents, that the bereavement of losing your child becomes, after many years, such an integral part of daily life that it is as usual and, it maybe needs admitting, as banal as a regular irritant. Its effects vary greatly within me of course, and one day it may feel like an irritating neighbour making too much noise but on another day it feels like I have been forced to drag a 100kg bag of soil behind me wherever I walk.
Over the years it has become impossible to differentiate my grief as something "other", as separate from me and outside of me. The primary disadvantage of this diabolical union of me and my grief, which has existed since the day Ruby died, is that it is always there with me. I am my grief, it can never leave me. But there is also advantageous power in recognising this uncomfortable fusion- or more specifically the pain associated with my grief rather than the grief itself- as being within me, something that I can have potential control over, something I can positively change. It takes many years of hard psychic work, sometimes with professional guidance, but, as has been recognised in a therapeutic context, pain may be mandatory but suffering can be optional. In other words, all my efforts in managing my grief over the last 11 years have been directed towards the navigation of my bereavement, not in ignoring its existence. Having agency is a major coping mechanism.
The importance of having agency- some sense of self-control- was clear to me from day one. In those very early times of shock and disbelief, some tiny message at the back of my brain whispered to me "start your homework now before the shock wears off". So I got to work reading about humanism, philosophy, grief psychology and anything else that I thought might be of use for the mental mountain I knew I was due to climb. I emailed a respected humanist, Professor A.C.Grayling, asking for advice and he wrote back with compassion and informative kindness. I bought books, read articles, asked questions, gathered information.
A few months after Ruby died the shock began to wear off and the true depth and breadth of the work ahead of me began to reveal itself. Looking back I don't know how I had managed so early to arrange this skeleton upon which to build some kind of new future, I imagine it may have been my deep unconcious making a feeble attempt at damage limitation. Whatever the cause, it developed within me a necessity to disconnect from being a slave to my environment and instead forced me to live in a considered way. In other words, if I was to survive grief I had to investigate the right way for me to do this, to put active effort into how I lived, thought and behaved.
I didn't always travel in the right direction. In the last 11 years there have been many setbacks and many avenues I have walked down only to come to a dead end. I have started friendships which have fallen short and I have investigated therapeutic supports that have come to nothing, I have spent months reading recommended books that were all but useless. But any effortful enquiry that may appear to have failed has at least failed under my direction and as per my instruction- after all, these were my choices to consider- and so their lack of success is not as wasteful as might otherwise be the case. To have choice is to have agency. If I fail I fail on my terms. Eleven years ago I unconsciously chose to become an active participant in my bereavement which means I could ask new questions and create new ways of looking and thinking and coping. Somehow, a part of me knew this to be true- I can be influential in my recovery.
This influence in my own affairs is an absolute necessity because what else am I to do? At times I feel I have no choice except to put uncommonly huge amounts of energy, all the mental effort I can create, into simply surviving. Just for today. If I didn't I would cry or scream or both and probably never stop. And I know this to be true, sometimes, so when I am quiet or distant this may well be the true reason- it might not be a thoughtfulness that occasionally overtakes me or an acute wonder what Ruby would think of this or of that, it may not be an introspective meditation about loss- it may simply be a defence being internally created against the potential riot that could explode at any moment. A riot is, after all, just an expression of anger and frustration without the polite necessity of control. And who wants that?
Every anniversary every year is different. Not necessarily more easy to manage each year, some years are worse than before, others are not. But a common theme, present every anniversary of her death, has been that I should expect something unexpected, forget that I am expecting this and then become shocked at this year's unusual event. In essence I become unexpectant of the unexpected. This year I felt an anxiety like never before in the days leading up to the anniversary date itself and also on the day (I am not used to irrational or sudden anxiety. Like anyone I would get nervous when it is expected- a job interview for example- but less than once a year I would have a "panic attack" or a similar type of acute anxiety). I was supposed to expect the unexpected, as I have told myself every year to do, but of course I forgot, as I also do every year, and so this anxiety totally shocked me. My anxiety always signals its arrival with waves of nausea too so that was a nice surprise.
On the day itself, 8th May, Claire and I laid flowers in particular places and kept ourselves gently distracted. Lunch out, plenty of walks, busied ourselves around the house, waited for Tom to come home from school and focused on the evening's routines until an early night to bed to as early a sleep as possible. Then the worst day of the year was over.
It is the worst day of the year, it always is and always will be. The weeks and days leading up to it are difficult, some years maddeningly so, and the day itself is always awful. We have learnt to have a plan for the day but also to let ourselves flag when we need to, be angry if we need to, fall apart if we need to. But we survive, we always do, and then it's over. It is, after all, just another day. Everything passes.
I miss Ruby so much, so, so, so much. I hear a song and I think of her, I read a book and I think of her, I watch the TV and I think of her, I do nothing and I think of her. I work and cook and chat and I live a normal day-to-day life and I think of my dead daughter. I meditate and I have free thought and I allow myself to look out the window and wonder and day-dream and still I think of Ruby. Of course the grief is easier to bear now 11 years have passed- of course it is, how can it not be- but she still isn't here with me and I still remain without her. There is a space near me that I am always aware of where there is nothing, no thing, that is forever existent and forever affecting of the rest of the space near me. Eleven years later there are faded memories, sometime only memories of memories. Grief is at once both visceral and at the fringes of living, it is all-pervading but also indistinct, it is congruous but also inconsistent. It can be fucking horrific, so painful and so distressing and so dreadful. But you survive. You have to. And you keep going, one day after the next, sometimes thoughtfully, sometime on autopilot, and you can eventually thrive again, live again, you can even live well. We grieve because we love but we survive because of it too.
