Midnight MGC Musings
Impending ‘anniversaries’ and how I’m navigating continuing bonds
Hi everyone! It’s Melinda. Welcome to Melinda’s Grief Corner! MGC comes out twice a month on Sundays. If this is your first time here, be sure to check out past posts to learn more about the inspiration behind this new Article Club feature and read about other grief-y topics I’ve covered with resources I’ve shared!
Spoiler alert! I’ve got a fun announcement in the video and also at the end of this newsletter! I hope you check it out!
Dear reader, let me set the scene.
It’s currently 12:25 am on a Wednesday morning. I’m logging onto work in less than 6 hours. And I am WIDE awake. I’ve been wide awake for a little over an hour. And no, this is not how I normally sit down to write MGC.
Close friends of mine would gasp in shock if you told them that I was staring at a screen this late at night. People in my life know that if you text me after 6:30 pm on any day of the week that ends in “day,” you won’t get a response from me until the next day because my notifications are silenced. And if you REALLY need me, you’re going to have to call me twice because, again, my notifications are silenced and the call won’t go through unless you call twice.
All to say, I really value my sleep. I don’t do screens in bed. I have an actual alarm clock because I refuse to use my phone in my bedroom. I have one of those lamps that has the option to glow red (I know creepy, yet good for sleep apparently!) to help me wind down for bed and induce better quality sleep. And generally I don’t have trouble with sleep.
That is until the grief era where sleep has been very erratic. In an earlier MGC newsletter I talked about how I was exhausted after my dad died. But there have also been periods of this grief era where sleep has been so incredibly elusive. So why today on this random Tuesday night/Wednesday morning?
Because next month it’ll be 18 months since my dad died. And it isn’t only the amount of time that feels weird - although wrapping my mind around the fact that the 2-year mark will be here before I know it is very strange - it is everything that has happened in those 18 months. It is everything he has missed.
Since he died on March 9, 2024 (side note - I can’t ever seem to just say ‘2024’ or ‘March’ I have to say the whole date, anyone else like this?), so many things have happened. I almost want to say too many things.
I moved back home after living away for 18 years. I bought my first house. I became a mentor at work. I got recognized for being an excellent mentor at work. I learned how to safely lift weights by working with my personal trainer. I became strong enough to squat 145 pounds (this happened in the past 48 hours!). I made new friends. I got strong enough to do an actual push-up. I joined a new book club. I got back into hot yoga. I visited Seattle for the first time. I started MGC. I started volunteering and fostering animals for the SPCA. My first foster puppy got adopted. Did I mention I freaking bought a house?!
Life isn’t just the number of months and days we live. It’s also the experiences we have, the goals we achieve, the relationships we form and nurture. And for grievers, it is the life we continue to live that we can’t share with our person anymore.
Not really at least. Not in the same way. Not in the way we want to or we have in the past. There are countless times, where for a split second I’ll think “oh I need to call my dad to tell him this, he’ll love this” and then I crash into the cold hard reality that I can’t do that. And there are also countless times where I’ve thought “I can’t figure this out, let me ask him what I should do” and I’m broken all over again.
In navigating (more like stumbling) this for nearly a year and a half (eek!), I came across the concept of “continuing bonds.” It’s the idea that we can continue to have a relationship with our person who died and that this practice can also be healthy for us. Now, caveat here - this is NOT helpful for everyone. There are many people who are not comforted by this. So I just want to give space to that and validate that experience.
Continuing bonds can look different for everyone, but one way to look at it is how we continue to integrate our person into our lives without even really thinking about it. For example, I have my dad’s coffee cup and I regularly use it. I also kept a bunch of his baseball caps and I’ll wear them occasionally. A more active example is when I talk to him. I do this a lot in the car (not sure why) or when I’m puttering about my house. A lot of the time it’ll be about a problem I’m facing where I just say out loud “so what do you think, what should I do about this?” or sometimes I’ll just randomly say “I miss you.”
I’m still working through continuing bonds in my own life. Sometimes having my dad so present in my life makes the loss feel bigger and makes me even more grief-y. Sometimes its comforting to have him that close. It’s not just one thing. And I share that in case it feels complex for you.
The folks over at What’s Your Grief (MGC favorite resource!) put together a very helpful article about this as well as a podcast that I highly recommend checking out if this is something that intrigues you. Again, it isn’t for everyone! And that’s ok too.
Until next time,
Big Hugs.
Oh! You made it to the end! Thank you for reading this far through and for also watching the video!
MGC IRL is in just a few weeks! You can learn more about it here! Hope to see you there!
The article on CB is great!