Morbid Anniversaries and Additions

Kristen R Anderson
Jul 25, 2017 · 6 min read

At this time last year, my family was in the shit. My sister had just been killed by a drunk driver, which was a devastation unto itself, and it was compounded by the fact that we were dealing with our dad’s illness and long-term hospitalization at the time. He died 2 months after my sister did, almost to the day.

That’s the fast-forward version; I go into it more here. But notice that I pointed out the “almost to the day” thing? It was 2 days shy of being exactly 2 months. Exact time is one of those details I’ve noticed we pay attention to when tragedies occur on or within days of the anniversary of some other event. We all of a sudden turn into little kids telling you our age is “four and three quarters.”

I’ll probably always remember the date my dad went into the hospital and really kicked off the run of hell-months — it was April 10. The worst time in my life started on April 10, and I knew that as it approached this year. I was well aware of it, could feel it coming, wondered how I would feel. When it came it had psychic weight to it but not too dense, and I touched on it in my mind throughout the day. I drafted an Instagram post about it in my Notes folder that I never posted because why get into it. It was weird but okay.

The day my sister was killed, June 26, carried the same kind of feeling. It was a little different and denser, and as we started to creep up to the time of night that she died, I started checking my phone for the time. When it came I wanted to be thinking about her, talking to her and lighting a candle for her on the makeshift and decidedly unsophisticated altar I have in my room — items from passed loved ones sitting on a side table from Christmas Tree Shoppe that I got on sale because it was chipped. My dad’s ashes and items are on a special shelf above it. I lit the candle and felt a little sad, but if I was being honest and not getting swept into the drama of lighting a candle on an altar, I was okay.

I expected both of these days to be rougher because I’ve had a hell of a time on some of the other landmark days. Both my dad’s birthday in November and Christmas had me bawling. On my sister’s birthday this June, just over 2 weeks before the day she died (there it is again), I woke up alright. Then like a total weirdo, I sought out the locker number 13 (the date) to put my gym bag in before my barre class, a tribute I’m sure she really appreciated. I started to tear up out of nowhere during class. Then after class I had to walk quickly to my car where I briefly but fully ugly-cry exploded, upset but retaining enough self-consciousness to drive 20 spaces down to park near an office building where the fancy barre ladies wouldn’t see me.

Then Father’s Day…ugh. That was the worst one. I sobbed practically from the time I woke up to the time my husband lifted the spell somewhat with a milkshake for me that he had picked up on the way home from seeing his dad, a trip I was supposed to go on but bailed. I hadn’t felt that sad in that drawn-out a way, with explosive, manic crying sessions that didn’t clean me out and do the trick the way they normally would, in a long time. I just couldn’t get it all out. I hoped I could write some of it out of me but my journal was on a shelf and I didn’t feel like reaching for it even though it was in arm’s reach. I felt catatonic. So as I lay in bed almost literally all day, I used my phone and basically live-blogged my pain like the most bummer TV show ever (the only edits are in italics):

“I wish my dad was alive. I miss him.

This week has been a lot between Karen’s birthday and Father’s Day. I wonder if I’m gonna cry this hard next year or if it’s a “first year without” thing. I don’t even wanna move. I have a headache. This sucks.

I’ve burst into loud random crying so many times today that Crumbs doesn’t even turn around to look anymore. Chloe still does. [My pets.]

I’m not even thinking about anything in particular when I cry, I just cry. It’s like my body is just sad, like the fact that you don’t have to think about having to pee, you just do. [I am so sorry I equated tears and pee, that’s really gross.]

I was crying and asked my dad to give me some little sign, and right then I looked at a box of meal prep containers I just ordered and the company name was SAMROG. Is the “Rog” a sign? Feels like a stretch, even for me.

Am I going to feel like this again on Karen’s death date? And then my dad’s? I can’t take this. I keep being surprised that the days hit me so hard, I didn’t know they mattered so much to me, I thought I felt like a day was a day. I guess I was wrong. Now that I think this, is it just becoming self-fulfilling prophecy? Am I making them big deals? I guess it doesn’t matter, either way, I feel it.”

But as I said, when it came, Karen’s death day was okay. Maybe my dad’s in August will be, too. Maybe just the days we would normally be celebrating with them get me, not the days we lost them. I like the idea a little, that it’s missing the happy times makes me upset — maybe that means somewhere inside my brain I don’t give the sad times as much weight. But it certainly doesn’t always feel like that. This whole thing has been a real challenge and exercise in being fluid with my feelings, trying to let them run their course and roll with them like the weather. In understanding that shitty feelings are something I can’t control, which frankly has always been a challenge for me anyway and didn’t really need an extra twist.

On Father’s Day I got out of bed to find Augusten Burroughs’ book “This is How” and flip to any sections I could find on death and grief. I read it years ago and I remembered an uncomfortable feeling when reading those passages. They made me cry, not just in empathy for the author but for my future self and family. They resonated with me — they had this ring of truth from a bell that hadn’t yet rung, but that I knew would.

“While there are some things from which you never heal, so be it.

The truth about healing is that you don’t need to heal to be whole.

By whole, I mean damaged, missing pieces of who you were, your heart — missing what feels like some of your most important parts. Yet not missing any part of you at all. Being, in truth, larger than you were before.

Because all of us are made not only of what we have but what we have lost.

And loss is not a subtraction. As an experience, it is an addition.”

Reading that was a true, significant but tiny moment. It made my heart beat harder and I had the deja vu muscle memory that I’d been similarly struck the first time I’d read it. I’d been floored by that perspective and scared to be hopeful that it was true. It is true, and I needed the reminder now that the bell had been rung.

In the same chapter, Burroughs writes that “loss creates a greater overall surface area within a person.” I find that to be true as well. Sometimes that means more room for pain because love cleared such a huge path, but the reverse is also right. Both pain and love touch those landmark dates in my life, the dates that marked the lives and the ends of my dad and my sister, and give them layers that I’ll have to roll with each year as they arrive. Additions.

Written by

Guide to the Unknown podcast host, Boho Berry assistant. I also love celebs and reality tv. How complex!

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