The Second Anniversary of Loss

Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of my father’s death, which happened just six months after my mother’s death. I find myself in a much better place than I was on the first anniversary. I wrote a year ago today that I was melancholic—past the immediacy of loss, but still mourning. Now, a year further into being an adult orphan, the reminders of loss are far less frequent, and when they hit, the pain is less intense.

I survived another Christmas without my parents. I thought of them often through the holidays, but not with the same level of “I’ll never see them again” grief that I had in the first year. My parents came to mind when I called my sister and brother—I used to call my parents on major holidays (not my siblings), unless my parents called me first. But I didn’t feel loss this year over memories of particular Christmases past that will never be repeated.

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My parents’ empty house

I recently looked through some photos of my parents’ last home while searching for a picture to use on another blog post. I felt a few pangs at seeing these photos. Some pictures were taken when the house was still furnished with all their belongings—now mostly sold or given to charity. Other pictures showed the empty rooms taken after the estate sale while the house was on the market. These later pictures remind me their lives have vanished, except in memory. All their earthly detritus is gone, except for a few mementos my siblings and I kept.

And I can accept the passing of their earthly presence. Most days. The waters have smoothed over my emotions, and the current once more runs far beneath the surface.

Still, every once in awhile something triggers my tears. The sight of one of my mother’s Hummel figurines. A Christmas ornament I gave my parents that I now put on my own tree. “Ave Maria,” a song my father loved.

These triggers will probably always happen. But the sense of overwhelming loss is gone. It’s a few tears, not a breakdown.

Mostly what I’m left with is two boxes of photographs and two boxes of files from my parents’ estates. I need to sort through both. I’ll have to keep some of the files for a few years. The photographs I’ll keep forever . . . or at least until I digitize them or my husband makes me throw them out.

And the memories. I still have the memories. Those, too, will last forever, even if new memories are added and the intensity of the past slips further beneath the surface.

What losses have you suffered that you find diminishing with time?

Posted in Family, Philosophy and tagged , , , , .

6 Comments

  1. I think all losses diminish with time but they remain losses that we experience differently going forward. Thank you for sharing your experience, Theresa. Technically, I too became an orphan when my father died in 2007 (my mother having died in 1994) but I’ve not really felt as such. I embody both of my parents so they live through me. Happy New Year to you, and may your memories continue to fill you with wholeness.

    • Irene,
      It is interesting to see how we are an amalgam of our parents. “I got this from Mom, and that from Dad . . . .”
      Happy New Year to you also, and thanks for reading.
      Theresa

  2. I lost my father when I was in my thirties, but my mother passed away in 2015, in July. I have two sisters and we all have the same experience–we hear something funny, read something interesting or watch a good TV program, and for that tiny fraction of a second, we think “I’ve got to call mom and tell her”. Then it’s gone, and for me that’s the hardest part. The complete impossibility of talking to her. I had her in my life for 67 years, and it wasn’t nearly long enough.

  3. I find as I get older, I wished my mom was here more often than when I was a career Nurse, full time mom, and just plain busy with life. I have the time now to sit and listen to her, like I did with her mother; Grandma Kay. At times I feel a great hollowness, not just on special occasions, mostly on quite days. I’m also sad that though us cousins are “The Last” of my Mom and Uncle Tom, we are not closer. Our family is slowly going away.

    • Vicki, I know what you mean about being “the last” — but I tell myself that’s only from one perspective. We may be the last to remember certain things, but there’s another generation or two beyond us making their own memories. As long as I keep that continuity in mind, I can let go of some of the past.
      Theresa

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