So, Death Anniversaries Suck
But they can also be the biggest reminder to love harder
Losing someone is both unique and something everyone will go through. It’s nuanced and predictable. It takes everything and leaves nothing.
Every year you come face to face with the day when they were and then, suddenly, the time of that same day when they weren’t.
You look for songs to bring you home, to make way for a sliver of clarity. You write or read or speak through stories to remind yourself that there were moments other than this one day or the days that came before it.
You learn to live with a grief that you have a complicated relationship with.
You accept that it’ll be there on your next birthday, the first time you sign a lease, the moment you say “I do,” the first time you look at your baby’s eyes. You know it’ll be there, because it was there last birthday, and when you made it to that one place you both said you would one day get to, and that one time you had a donut.
You weave pieces of their lives into your own in a feeble attempt to keep them alive past when the oxygen was able to.
Then there’s the moment when it becomes harder and you don’t remember if they liked chocolate cake or cheesecake better. Those memories are faint, blurry in a way only time is able to bring about.
You may come down on yourself for not remembering, but what if that’s just time’s way of freeing you? Of reminding you that how they made you feel, how you know you made them feel, the things you do remember, that those are the things that matter.
What if it’s God’s (read: whoever/whatever you believe in) way of reminding you that in the grand scheme of things the one time your boyfriend annoyed you/your best friend let you down/your girlfriend took it out on you, that none of that is as important as the feeling you know you’re going to miss if you ever found yourself between the moment they are and the one they aren’t.
A death anniversary is a reminder of someone’s passing but it’s also a reminder that you’re still alive.
At the beginning this can be a reason to feel all the guilt, but maybe/hopefully/eventually it’ll be the reason you hug those you love a little tighter. One day it may be the day you choose to love a little harder, be a little more forgiving, be the bigger person because it may be the day you remember that the only way to get through any episode of grief is with love.
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I’m the founder of toodamnyoung.com. You can find me talking about mental health, grief and work-life on Living Vulnerably: https://medium.com/living-vulnerably
I also host Creating Espacios, podcast for the next generation of Latina trailblazers.
Follow along as I condense essays into 140 characters: https://twitter.com/vivnunez
