Accepting That Patrick is Gone

I want to share something with you from my counseling session today. An unexpected blessing that has left me in a beautifully painful but freeing space. I am on the precipice of real change. Real healing. It’s scary, but exciting. My mind is racing a thousand miles an hour on the outside around a calm, quiet center. A hurricane of emotion.

I was talking with her about how ever since I saw the Memorial Day pictures in my memories, I had felt sad and anxious. I said that I was “dreading the emotional slog to September. I know what’s coming, and I can’t stop it.” I talked about having done the 31 Days of Patrick and how that had kept me from reliving his life day-to-day this year, but it hadn’t stopped this part of my grief cycle. She said something to me then that, after the shock of the hit wore off, I realized she had told me last year, and it was one of the reasons for doing the 31 Days of Patrick to begin with: Nothing is coming. It already happened. Patrick’s already gone. He’s gone.

Friends, I can’t tell you how heavy a hit that was. I mean, logically, he had to be gone for me to know it was coming, but for me to be dreading it, it had to be something that could happen—and he couldn’t die again. So that made no sense. She then went further and said, “You can’t lose him any more than you already have. You won’t lose the memories, or the feeling when you hear ‘Happy.’ He’ll always be with you.” And I suddenly realized that that had been my real fear each year. That I would somehow lose him more. That I would lose what I have left.

Just since our talk this morning, I am already feeling less sad today than I have for several days now. Patrick’s not leaving me in September. It’s just an anniversary. He’ll be with me as much then as he is today and tomorrow and every other day. This seems so simple a truth. And yet, accepting it means putting behind every piece of emotional denial I had. It means having to feel every feeling that has been stuffed away. It’s one of those moments when what is in your head suddenly slams down into your heart, and there is no turning back. You can’t unsee it. You can’t unknow it. “Patrick is already gone. He. Is. Gone.” It’s an excruciatingly painful realization. And yet. Simultaneously, there is this huge unburdening. A lightening. A letting go. “I can’t lose him again. It’s not possible. I get to keep everything I have.” There is nothing to fear from any of his anniversaries.

So I find myself in a strange new space. Having all the feels. But it also feels like an amazing breakthrough. And since we don’t hear much good news right now, I just wanted to share it with all of you.

P.S. For those who missed the 31 Days of Patrick, I recreated them as a Shutterfly book for Mother’s Day which you can view here.