A few months ago, a friend asked me if I was thinking of doing anything special to mark the 10 years of my husband Rob’s death anniversary at the end of May. The question felt like a jolt. On some level, I knew it was 10 years, but I hadn’t actively been thinking about it.
A couple of years ago, I read Cariad Lloyd’s book You Are Not Alone, a guide to help people through the process of grieving. It charts Cariad’s loss of her own father, but one chapter that stood out to me was about significant markers of time – when you pass the 10-year mark, then the 20-year mark. These seemed like such long periods of time, and I asked myself how I might feel when I reached the 10-year anniversary of my husband Rob’s death by suicide. Would I would feel worse, or more removed from it?
With my friend’s words echoing in my ears, I thought about putting on some kind of event that would help to raise money for suicide prevention charity CALM. I asked my sister if I could maybe spend the day with her, because perhaps I shouldn’t be alone. And then I realised that I couldn’t do any of that. That 10 years is an arbitrary number. It is us little old humans trying to yet again instill some sense of order onto grief, when anyone who has experienced deep grief will know that it does not behave according to order and rules.
The death anniversary for me is such precise evidence of that. I didn’t know how I would feel in the first year of it, and I tried to meet it as it arrived. But I started to feel terrible around six weeks before the date itself – depressive, indecisive, unable to socialise much.
My family, who hid a lot of their worry from me, suggested we all spend it together in my parents’ back garden, along with my best friend and some of Rob’s family. On balance, it made a terrible day less terrible; we told stories of Rob, and my mother did a puja – a Hindu blessing for Rob, where she made some of the dishes he liked, and we said a prayer for him. Although I’m an atheist, going back to my childhood rituals was incredibly comforting.
The moment the day passed, the cloud hanging over me dispersed. I hadn’t realised how heavy all of that sadness and pain had been until it lifted. The following year, I wanted to spend it alone, but my parents again asked if I wanted to spend it with them. This time it was different. Instead of that depression landing six weeks before, this time it was four weeks. And although I appreciated my parents’ gesture, I felt as if I had to curate my grief for them. I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted to be left alone.
By the time I reached the third year, I was angry about it. I felt it again, that feeling of heaviness come upon me around three weeks before, and I yelled out loud. Is this what I have to deal with for the rest of my life? I was angry that I had not only lost Rob, but now I was continuing to lose chunks of my life to this black hole of grief that would open above my head at random, and not spit me out until after the day was over.
This time, I was alone by choice. I didn’t want to speak to anyone, see anyone. I listened to Rob’s playlists that he’d left behind like an astral trail on my Spotify, I walked in the vast expanse of fields and meadows, I looked at pictures of him, and I wore his clothes. I just wanted to be left alone, in madness, in grief.
In the years since then, I’ve tried a few things that have failed and humbled me in doing so. One year I decided I was going to go to the Isle of Skye. This is it! I said. Finally I’ll be free! And every time I went to try and book it, I just couldn’t do it.
The following year I forced myself to go to Florence. I flew out a week before the anniversary, with plans to fly home the day after. At first, it was fine. I went to the market I knew and loved, ate ridiculously good cheese, fresh bread and tomatoes. But around day four, I started to feel heavy in my body. By day five – around three days before the anniversary – I had a panic attack on my way to a restaurant. When I got back to the Airbnb, I booked an earlier flight home and cried on the plane. It felt as if I was never going to move past this, no matter how much time had passed.
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Since the Florence trip, I’ve tried to be more compassionate to myself. Grief, and the guilt that follows a suicide, is a reminder that sometimes things happen that we can’t control and that we have no understanding around.
As someone who has actively pushed against the heaviness that sits in my body ahead of a death anniversary, someone who has forced themselves into a different environment as if that will be the cure, someone who has tried almost every iteration of “overcoming” the death day – none of it works. It has taught me that just because I want something to be different, it doesn’t mean it will be.
On the one hand, 10 years is a significant amount of time. Since Rob died, we’ve had a pandemic, many different prime ministers, I’ve fallen in love again (and fallen out), he has nieces and nephews he will never meet, people we know have gotten married and divorced, and other elderly loved ones have died. But on the other hand, when it comes to a death day, we are not measuring everything that has happened in our lives, we are measuring the space between the last time we saw them and now. That passes in the blink of an eye.
While I have sought understanding around the things that mark Rob’s death day – the heaviness that begins a week before, the need to be alone – I am not sure I will ever arrive at it. Perhaps it is some higher consciousness that wants to protect me, to not feel compelled to make space for other people during a time when I really can’t. Or perhaps it is like a monument to mark the moment a great love passed through the world and beyond, and it requires standing still for a time.
Others may feel differently. Perhaps 10 years is significant for them, although I struggle to see what it is a marker of, beyond great loss. Either way, I will be spending it somewhere in a field, listening to Gil Scott-Heron, thinking about the thick slice of cake I am going to eat, before finishing my day lighting a candle to Rob.
For confidential advice and support, the Samaritans are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Call for free on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org.
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