When the Years Keep Adding Up

Dates and numbers can be brutal in grief.

Our wedding anniversary was last week. Today is the anniversary of Pat’s death. I was already feeling all of it when our son Jesse wrote in our family feed, “I’ve now lived without him as long as I lived with him.”

Our youngest crossed that threshold years ago. But seeing Jesse put it into words hurt.

I have never liked the passing of time without Pat. I’ve even hated when people round up—calling it another year before that year has actually passed. Those months matter to me. I don’t want to hurry any of it along.

Each year means more life he hasn’t been here for. More family stories, more changes, more people I wish he could know. There are grandchildren who know him as Granddad through our stories, but who never got to know him for themselves. I love our growing family, and I still wish he were here to be part of it.

Fall holds all of this for me. Our anniversary. The day he died. Then Halloween, with death on display everywhere. Since losing Pat, the skeletons and gravestones feel very different. Something other people experience as playful touches a loss that is still deeply personal.

Sometimes a whole season carries the weight of someone’s absence.

So do we acknowledge these milestones? Give them a voice?

I think we do, when we need to. Jesse needed to say what he was feeling. I was feeling it too. We don’t have to find something reassuring to say about the number. Sometimes we just need to hear each other say, “I know. I miss him too.”

That is part of why the Paisley Project matters to me.

As time passes, there can be fewer places to speak freely about the person we lost. People may stop asking. They see us working, traveling, laughing, or enjoying our families, and assume the hardest part is behind us. Meanwhile, we may be quietly approaching a date that feels enormous.

Within Paisley, we can say it out loud. We can talk about a wedding anniversary, an empty place at a family celebration, or a milestone our husband should have been here to see. We can tell the same story again because we still love it. We can have a hard day without explaining why we are “still” having hard days.

We can also discover something we enjoy, make a new friend, or begin imagining what we want next. Those experiences belong in our lives alongside the missing. I know this because I live both, and I see both in the women who gather with us.

Our experiences are different. A date that overwhelms one woman may pass quietly for another. Even our own responses can surprise us from year to year. Having people who listen gives us room to find out what we need, without being hurried toward feeling better.

My hope is that Paisley is a place where you can bring whatever this season holds for you. You don’t need to arrive with perspective, a plan, or a positive ending to your story.

Sometimes being together means trying something new. Sometimes it means telling a story about someone we love. And sometimes it means letting a few honest words stand:

This hurts today. I miss him.

There is room for that here.

With Love-

Karyl