Three Months

March 29th marks the three month anniversary of being a widow.  Sometimes it feels like just yesterday Jeff was sleeping next to me and other times it feels like these last three months have taken ions.

Is it terrible to want to fast forward a couple years?  I just want to fast forward the grieving process.  I want to go to sleep and wake up a few years from now and the intense grieving is over.  I want to be at a place I have read about where people who are two or three years in talk about how the majority of the sharp edges of grief have dulled.  I feel like it could be akin to serving time in jail.

Or instead of sleeping through it, I want to be able to literally fast forward like in a movie, see myself but just in super speed, grieving and living but not really getting the full experience.  But I know that it really doesn't matter how much time passes, it's the process of grieving that allows the people I read about to be in the better place they are in BECAUSE they didn't fast forward.  They lived through that pain in order to be in a better place, they experienced every raw emotion, painful anniversary, event, and moment necessary to be stronger.  They are rebuilding and reinventing their new normal.  I cannot cheat.  But I want to so bad.  I don't want to forget about Jeff, I just want the sharp edges of hurt, pain and angst to be dulled.  I know at some point I will look back and be able to give advice to another who is continuously being stabbed by the sharp edges of grief and tell them one day those edges will be dull, but those sharp edges are still very sharp for me and I continue to bleed.  I'm tired of bleeding.

In one of my books on grieving I read these following quotes:

• Grief will take more time than I think I can bear, but I can and I will.
• I will not always feel as I do now.
• I am doing ok.  Grief will not destroy me.
• I will make it through this experience just as others have before me.

Sometimes these quotes help me and sometimes they don't.  I also know from all of my grief literature, bereavement groups, and counseling that I need to have plans on an anniversary.  Today my family will be celebrating my twin niece's second birthday.  I will go visit Jeff and his new plaque at the cemetery and then try and celebrate my two beautiful and lively nieces.  I take that back, I will not TRY, I WILL celebrate them.

I do not want to fast forward through these years of their lives, so I cannot fast forward through my grief.  Let the bleeding continue and I hope that as I bleed, those edges become more and more dull.