March | 2024 | Bertram's Blog

Fourteen Years

March 27, 2024 — Pat Bertram

I’d stopped writing about grief a while ago — I stopped writing about anything, actually, except for an occasional post to give long time readers an update on my life. I certainly hadn’t intended to write anything else on the subject, although for many years, I felt it was my mission to document my grief so that others who were going through the same thing understood the truth: no matter how crazy grief feels or how long it takes, it’s a normal response to the death of a special loved one. I no longer have the zeal to help grievers, but today is the fourteenth anniversary of Jeff’s death, and I didn’t think the day should go uncommemorated. To be honest, I’m not sure why I feel as if I should commemorate the day. Although I still feel the jagged crack in my soul from where he was ripped from my life, the emptiness has been mostly filled with new memories, new experiences, new foci. Besides that, he has been gone so any years that I no longer feel as if I have a claim on his life. Or his death. Nor do I feel the anniversary in my very soul as I did in the beginning. If not for having it marked on the calendar, I might have let the day pass without acknowledgement. (I remember the date, of course, it’s just that time and calendars don’t seem to correlate to my daily life as they once did.)

Still, both his life and his death affected me enormously. I would not be the person I am today without knowing both love and grief, though I’m not sure that matters — the part about me being the person I am today, that is. For all I know, if things had been different, I might have been a better person, though I could have been worse or simply different or perhaps even the same. We can never know what might have been. All I know is that when he died, my life was sent on a completely different trajectory, and I ended up living a life I could never have imagined when we were together.

I wonder sometimes if we met up today if he’d still like me, but that is a futile speculation. He is gone. He has as little claim to my life now as I have to his. And yet, I do miss him, and perhaps always will.

A friend who has been widowed (widowered?) twice has just married his third wife. I can’t imagine the courage it takes to love again after losing a much-loved spouse not once but twice, nor can I imagine the hope it must entail.

But we all do the best we can to get through our days, and today, the best I can do is to think of Jeff.

And to remember.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in grief, life. Tags: commemorating the death of a loved one, dealing with the loss of a soul mate, fourteen year anniversary of grief. 13 Comments »

Momentous March

March 5, 2024 — Pat Bertram

There isn’t much in my life anymore that I want to or need to commemorate. There’s been nothing spectacularly good or spectacularly bad — just life. Living day by day. Enjoying being alive, or at least being at peace and accepting of what comes. I read, play games on the computer, exercise a bit, try to eat right, visit with friends occasionally. Just . . .live.

If there is any month, though, that should be commemorated, it is March, mostly because so many life of my life changing experiences have happened this month. In three weeks, it will be the fourteenth anniversary of Jeff’s death. It’s hard sometimes to remember that I wasn’t always alone, that once I shared my life with someone but fourteen years is a long time. Still, I do remember, especially during this month.

A happy commemoration is that March is also the anniversary of my becoming a homeowner. It’s amazing that those five years have sped by so quickly. It seems as if it wasn’t that long ago that I made this momentous and life changing decision. I have never once regretted buying the house — in fact, most days I look around in gratitude for this lovely, comfortable home.

March is also the month where my yard starts to come alive — the grass is greening, the tulips are poking through the winter-weary ground, and the larkspur are sprouting. I’m surprised to see the carpet of green larkspur sprouts this year — I thought I’d done a good job of collecting (and sharing!) the seeds — but I’m glad to see how eager they are to grow, especially since we’ve had so little moisture this winter. (The mountains grabbed it all before it could hit the plains.)

March is also the month I became a published author. Though it was a life-changing experience, to a certain extent, anyway, it wasn’t as much of a change as I had hoped. Still, it deserves a mention, especially now that I’ve pretty much given up writing. (I can’t even manage to write a single blog post every month, when once I wrote one ever day in addition to my fiction writing.)

I don’t often mention my birthday — I used to spend so much time online, used to post so much information, that I didn’t like the idea of my birth date being bandied about — but a birthday is certainly the anniversary of a life changing experience, perhaps the life changing experience, and that anniversary also occurs this month.

So far, all I’ve been doing to commemorate these momentous anniversaries is going outside every morning to see if any more tulips made an appearance, but with so many things to celebrate (though the anniversary of Jeff’s death isn’t something to celebrate, my surviving all these years and even thriving certainly is), I really ought to do something special. Well, posting this blog is special, but I should do something else I seldom do. Bake a cake maybe.

Wishing you a happy, momentous March!