I’m in the midst of a flurry of anniversaries of the tragic events of last year, in which my partner and I lost eight family members and friends. I am not normally one to show outward signs of distress, but I have to say that when 2025 slipped into 2026, I admit to having shed a tear or two. The cumulative series of tragedies wore me down. By the turn of the year, I felt that there was a glimpse of light in the winter dark. By and large, I still do but the anniversaries are hitting in me ways I was not expecting.
Several of the anniversaries have come and gone and they’ve come along far quicker than I expected. Not all the dates are etched in my mind – dates rarely are – but the loss I still feel is still more potent than individual memories. Often, when I see, read or hear something, my first reaction is to tell someone who I knew would be interested. My second reaction now is the sadness of remembering that there is no-one to tell. In some ways, time has not been the healer I expected it to be and the feelings are as raw as ever.
Guilty of overthinking at the best of times, my overthinking has gone into overdrive. I thought I had processed the losses, and in some ways I have, but my mind will not settle. I still miss both the human contact and contact via the internet of things. I realised a long time ago that my contact with friends and family varied from occasional contact to regular, sometimes daily, conversations of one sort or another. Now there is an emptiness which appears to be filled by my wildest imaginings and my dreams. They are mentally tiring and I find the mental tiredness makes me physically tired. And tiredness seems to exaggerate everything, my overthinking included.
We talk about closure after we suffer loss. The funeral apparently takes care of that. But I keep forgetting, a funeral in itself does no such thing. Worse, many of those we loved and lost did not have funerals or had them in places far away that we could not attend. It feels to me like the closure we seek doesn’t always happen at the same time or in the same way.
The helplessness doesn’t, well, help. There is little to say and nothing we can do. These things, grief and closure, seem to just happen. I feel like I have been reduced to just hoping things might happen, that things must get better. They don’t seem to be at the moment.
An emotional reunion this week with close family who lost a loved one was as welcome as it was stressful as it was exhausting. We had not seen them since the terrible day. Our stresses and strains are nothing compared to theirs, we know that, but now my partner and I are shattered. The grieving just goes on.
There is a lot more of this in 2026. At least now I know that the rest of this year will not be plain sailing. Most of the tragic anniversaries are still to come. Having thought that I was over everything, that I had finished grieving, that the emptiness of loss was over, I now know different, I now know better.
I am seeing through a hazy fog of confusion today, fog I hope will begin to lift as I seek to find clarity and to move on. I don’t need any more surprises on the anniversary front. I need to be ready. I don’t want to feel as emotionally drained as I do today. And the more I write about it, the better I understand.
Apologies if you have read all this before. You’ll doubtless read another version of it soon enough. All I will say is nothing lasts forever, love the one you’re with. They might need be there tomorrow. Neither might you.
