Changing Grief

I have been doing a lot of thinking the last couple of days about this grief journey.  I think for the first four plus months, it has all felt like a bad nightmare that I was eventually going to wake up from.  I think the grief during that time was full of disbelief and shock.  It was more of a dramatic emotional grief.

 I feel like I went through a somewhat numb stage through the holidays.  I think some of that was how busy our holidays were, without much time to sit and think.  I have come to realize too that the more I prepare myself for something to be hard, I am usually shocked that it isn’t as bad as I thought it would be – probably because the anticipation is worse than the actual event.  I think in preparing myself for a difficult situation, I grieve ahead of time.  I’m not sure if I am explaining this clearly.

I have been shocked at how hard the grief has hit since the holidays and yet it feels different from before the holidays.  It is more of a calm, deep grief.   I think the permanence of the loss is truly sinking in and I am grieving the loss of Scott’s companionship, friendship, and love the most right now.  The loneliness is hitting home more now than in the first five months.  It is harder to see his things now than it was in the beginning, which at first didn’t make sense to me.  But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am probably entering another stage of grief and truly beginning to face and understand what the reality of our future without Scott is going to be. 

Grief is so draining – physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Sleep continues to be an issue for me.  Most nights I still have difficulty falling asleep.  But even on nights that I get to sleep early and get a good night’s sleep, I still feel exhausted the next day.  At least I am no longer fighting to stay awake at work and relying on caffeine to stay awake and alert.  I have successfully broken free from the caffeine addiction that I found myself in. 

Tomorrow morning I have yet another meeting with my attorney to take care of legal paperwork for Scott’s estate.  It still amazes me how long it takes to settle these things and get everything taken care of.  How naive I was in the days after Scott’s death, thinking that I could get everything settled and taken care of within a week or two.  Just this week I finally was able to get to closing credit card accounts in Scott’s name.  It has been a slow process, each month taking care of one more thing.  It still gets me when a bill comes in the mail in Scott’s name or both our names.  I think that I have most things settled at this point finally, although when the weather gets warmer I will still have two boats/trailers to sell – a pontoon boat and a little fishing boat.  If anyone is interested in either of these things, let me know.