Question:
Over the past 11 months I thought I had been handling my father’s death pretty well. We were close, but moments of tears and heartache seemed fewer. Now, I am almost worse than ever. Why do I feel so bad as the first anniversary of my father’s death approaches?

Answer:
Emotions don’t run in a straight line; nor are they always able to be controlled. There’s a rhythm to bereavement, but not a timetable. How long it takes to accommodate and adjust to major loss is measured over many months, and in reality extends for years.

In our impatient culture, many of us expect, and are expected, to stop mourning in a short time, and absolutely by the time a full year has passed. That expectation is ridiculous, even cruel. Grief does not disappear forever as you turn the calendar for the twelfth time. Sadness over the loss of a loved one is never eliminated by time. Time heals through a diminishing of the intensity of feelings. No end point of forgetting ever comes. No point exists at which you can say, “I have totally integrated and accepted my loss.”

And what of the anniversaries of those losses? Following the cultural expectation that we should “be over” our grieving sets us up to be blindsided with the unexpected tears and sadness you describe. Anniversaries can come with devastating impact precisely because most people do not expect such impact.

When a loved one dies, our minds record the many external signals that mark that time of year: the season, holidays, the outside temperature, and even different smells in the air. Any one of these remembered signals, certainly in combination with others, is sufficient to stimulate memory of your loss,  accompanied by a flood of emotions.

Thus, anniversary reactions are really unplanned, though predictable, trips in the personal time machine of your mind’s memories. They happen to all of us. They are deniable, but unavoidable. Ride with them as you would ride a particularly heavy wave in the surf. They will last varying amounts of time, from hours to several weeks. Then, like the wave, they recede, leaving you perhaps a bit tired, perhaps shaken from the experience, but quite able to go on. In going on you celebrate your own gift of life and through it pay tribute to the realities of the relationship you had with your father.

Dr. Stephen P. Hersh, is a psychiatrist who has specialized in dealing with the chronically and terminally ill and their families.