The hardest part of grief, I am still finding, is just how little control I have over my reactions or my ability to dictate them when grief is involved.
I like to think I have it all under control. Lots of the time I'm like a duck - I look like I'm smoothly sailing along but paddling like crazy underneath to keep myself afloat.
I think I'm looking like this duck:
Other times, like the last 2 weeks, not only have I sunk, I've upended myself.
And I now look much more like this duck:
I ignorantly thought as I had navigated Christmas and New Years so well, that would continue through with the other hard things.
I mean - the anniversary day itself I knew would be tricky - but we did it. I felt confident in my own self it was setting us up for being able to handle all the things as well.
And it's the fourth time we've navigated The Hard Things. Surely we would be getting the hang of it now?
Oh how wrong I was.
And oh, how much I berate myself for being so silly to think that I had any control over it.
I can wind myself down into a cracking wallow of self loathing with just how stupid I am for thinking I could control things. Or that if I acted like everything was ok, that everyone else close to me would be ok, too.
I have that ability, right?
I do not.
I also apparently do not have the ability to even make it ok for my own self.
People question how I can possibly think I would have control over my grief. I generally respond with a 'but why wouldn't I?' and they smile empathetically at me and in the most loving and caring way say: Only you could think that you can control grief.
And so came the anniversary of Pete's funeral last week. It was a day I didn't think would be as significant as the day he died. I didn't remember it being a bad day last year. Surely as the years go by it just decreases in importance, right?
If I just ignored it - didn't acknowledge it - that it would just be a day. If I ignored it, it would just be like any other day.
Wrong. Seriously wrong.
Then we had a child's birthday.
The kids have now all had 3 birthdays without their Dad. Last week's was the beginning of run for the 4th without him.
But when it was the last child crossing the milestone of turning from single digits to double digits, the thoughts that we no longer have a baby/toddler/young child in our house and all of the kids are now officially tweens/teens, and the realisation we had reached that milestone without their Dad, that smashed me.
Then I had a child starting high school.
This is the third one.
And in actual fact, none have had their Dad around for it - our eldest started high school the day after Pete's funeral.
But the only boy and after 2 years of remote schooling and seeing just how excited he was and just how much he has grown up in the last 3 years ... as he walked to the car fully kitted out in uniform and bags it utterly broke my heart this milestone was being happening without a Dad and bathed in grief.
I thought I had prepared myself for these things.
I thought I had steeled myself and acknowledged them all internally to myself well enough so I wouldn't be impacted externally.
I thought that I could remain the duck - calm on the top and just paddling away underneath.
I thought that if I just cried in the shower this morning and got it out, then the reality of it would be different.
Oh how wrong I was.
And because I'm so exceptional at berating myself for not reading the grief weather forecasts correctly when apparently everyone else can - I feel utterly defeated that I got it wrong ... again.
I keep being reminded by people that it has only been three years and I keep thinking I need to remember that, but then I think if I was doing ANYTHING else every day for 3 years I would be better at it.
And yet here I sit, sobbing away, utterly defeated, because I am not. And perplexed and frustrated I have not mastered it.
It is apparently not masterable.
And yet I continue to berate myself for not being able to.
I'm hoping at some point I can learn to not try and control it. Roll with it. Accept the waves will come and just ride them rather than standing firm and having them smash against me.
I thought I had got my head around it all.
The last 2 weeks have proved to me that I still know nothing and maybe I should stop trying to be the duck and powering on trying to escape the ignore it all, and just sit and bob around in the water.
It just still hurts so much.
And why would anyone sit still when you can see pain coming? Why wouldn't I try and paddle away?
But maybe I should.
Because ignoring or trying to control it this year has actually just made it hurt even more.
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