The weather refuses to be controlled, but we can try to anticipate it. Even then, sometimes, we are abruptly caught off guard, despite our best efforts to prepare for or avoid the storm altogether.

The Cycles of Grief

In a life stained with grief, passing time is composed of short sprints trying to complete the paralyzing to-do list and get your life back on track, followed by long periods of sluggishness, an inability to move, and often taking two steps backwards.

The changing seasons of grief never stop cycling, forcing the mind to resettle time and again.

The Earth’s axial tilt is a constant as our planet revolves around the sun, and the seasons arrive with predictability. Like grief, forecasting anomalies in the global climate is not always easy, and severity can propagate into our lives when least expected.

With the bursting buds, gained sunlight, and chirping birds of evolving spring, also comes an emotional shift we are forced to confront. Each season has familiar symbolism and feelings associated with it. Winter is often represented as sadness, gloomy darkness, or death and decay in literary references.

When spring approaches, there is a rebirth filled with energetic moods and happiness. The summer is a season for our minds and bodies to thrive, while hibernation is acceptable in the wintertime.

This makes winter a comfortable place to be for a grieving widow.

Early Grief is Unfathomable

Early grief is an all-consuming heaviness, a weight so substantial your entire body hurts, and simple tasks feel impossible.

In the beginning, thinking about my late husband, Chris, never ended. Every moment of every activity I did was filled with thoughts of Chris. While managing my children, it was blatantly obvious; I was in it alone. It took eight months for me to start thinking about myself while I parent my children, what is best for me, and what is best for them, instead of the fact that Chris is absent.

I cannot say that I think about the future yet, but now, there are moments in my day that are not consumed by the thoughts of being an only parent.

I take this as a sign that I am moving forward; however, there is nothing linear about this path. I moved from a steady state of monotonous survival onto a roller coaster ride of a lifetime. The highs are higher, but the lows are the lowest I have experienced yet.

Crashing Waves of Grief

Grief is sneaky too; you don’t see the drop-offs coming, and then suddenly, you crest that peak and are plunging downward. It’s confusing, it’s frustrating, and it’s angering. Sometimes you can correlate the emotions to something with meaning, like an anniversary date. Still, other times, there is no explanation.

The onset of a grief wave is uncomfortable; I hate it when it happens because the whole house goes into a state of depression. Returning text messages, paying bills, and general logistics of running our lives requires a mental load I cannot keep up with. I must navigate the flood of painful memories and maintain patience for my young children, who are also grieving. I become physically exhausted, sleep a lot, and can’t remember simple details.

When my head is on point, we are in tip-top shape, and I can multitask like nobody’s business. Still, more often than not, I am left frustrated at my brain for not performing in the way that I know I am capable of. They call it, “widow-brain,” but what can-of-worms is it when you have baby-brain and widow-brain at the same time?

When I am in a period of doing well, I fear throwing off the rhythm. If I know something may disrupt our stride, I tend to avoid it.

Avoidance in Grief

Avoidance with respect to grief is called experiential avoidance. It is a coping mechanism (not recommended), for when it is all too great to handle.

The passage of time is painful and easily ignored if you want to block it out – don’t look at the calendar, don’t listen to the radio, and tune out social media on the weekends.

Sometimes the world demands too much adaptability from us at once. The thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations that come along with memories in extreme grief are unenjoyable and, therefore, can become associated with anxiety about losing control.

The ways I avoid my feelings and strive to maintain control are:

• Avoid sleeping for fear of the dreams.
• Sleep extra to block out the world and avoid thinking
• Avoid driving certain streets or visiting buildings, and there are locations I don’t plan to ever return to.
• Avoid Chris’ drawers and clothing.
• Avoid genres of music or the newly released album by our favourite artist.
• Avoiding certain cleaning spots in the house for fear of finding a hair or fingernail
• Avoid smelling his deodorant because I’ve made the mistake twice before and know I can’t handle it.
• Purposely ignore the passing days and forget what month it is, I can only guess how many months it has been since he passed because I don’t want to count.

Inescapable Reminders

I work hard to ignore the passage of time. It seems like when I notice the day; it is another Saturday morning. The weekend programming is on the radio, and I am alone cooking breakfast for my family in the kitchen. These are the mini grief-aversaries that repeatedly come up and are not associated with a calendar date – a fresh morning, the coffee brewing, sun streaming in through the windows and the excitement of a whole day ahead for us to enjoy together.

You can neglect the days, push specific dates from your mind, but you cannot avoid the rejuvenation in the springtime. We equate the passing time with the seasons, and they are an inescapable sensual reminder. All senses are on board; the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings on your skin.

Change is Hard

When comfortable, our body is in an internal equilibrium with grief, moving forward with a cozy rhythm. The changing seasons force a reorder, and we become bombarded with associated memories. A warm summer breeze or the smell of fresh-cut grass, can instantly take you back and have the grief waves crashing down hard.

The coming summer holds feelings from all past summers. The pain of trying to cram everything into the last one I had with Chris (the season in which he died), or the ache for habitual customs from the previous 13 years.

Changing Seasons of Grief

Every widow is acutely aware when the weather changes course. Every detail of the flowers blooming or the snow beginning to fall are sternly observed. Grief is entwined tightly with the cyclical patterns of the seasons, and minds become on high alert as soon as the wind shifts, anxiety about what’s to come rises.

Springtime in Nova Scotia is cool, rainy and often slower coming than we wish it to. I know that by the end of May (and Georgia’s birthday), the leaves will burst on the trees, we have been yearning for this moment for months. It was something Chris and I loved about living in Pennsylvania; spring came just a little earlier. But, for the first time ever, I hate it.

This year it is different for me. I do not want the leaves to come out on the trees; don’t dare throw me off of the balance I have found with the last season.

Each day, I glance at the tips of the maple branches to see the tree buds advancing towards leaves, and my chest tightens. A protrusive indication of the months passed, and I cannot evade it. Even in a pandemic, when many components of society have slowed or stopped to match my world, you cannot prevent the erupting springtime.

The societal mood shifts to cheerfulness in the spring and optimism for happiness all around contributes its own pain. There is a pressure to feel joyful and invigorated.

As Chris would always say, “these are the most vibrant greens of the year,” eluding to being full of life.

Having stirred emotions with the changing seasons is unavoidable, we all reminisce for days past but get a little spark in our step when the sun shines.

What time of year makes your grief feel heavier?