Ethan’s Mom: “Many people find that the second year is harder than the first.”

I remember hearing these words from a grief counselor at the Amelia Center after the first anniversary of Ethan’s death, and they knocked the wind out of me. How could anything be harder than the year we had just (barely) survived? How could anything be harder than the confusion upon waking, the fog throughout the day, and the extreme fatigue brought on by just doing the basic activities of living each day?

I am not sure that it was more difficult, but only because it is one of those apples vs. oranges comparisons. I can say with absolute certainty the second year was extremely difficult in different ways. I thought I was past being in shock a long, long time before I really was, and I had no idea how much it served as a protective barrier against the full weight of grief. The whole first year was a bad dream. Every “first” was horrible and surreal. At the end of all those firsts, I felt like we had earned a reprieve. Does the offseason start now?

No. No, it doesn’t.

Because as soon as you get past all the “firsts,” you immediately start in on the “seconds.” Then it hits you: the seconds are followed by thirds and fourths and you never cross the finish line. I had been so focused on getting through the milestones, not realizing that things weren’t going to feel any better on March 11, 2018. Nothing was going to be the same for the rest of my life. In the second year, our loss felt more permanent and even more profound than it had before.

I have been thinking about that a lot in the last few weeks as the news of the delta variant and its resulting surge in COVID-19 cases is at the forefront of everyone’s mind. It’s another facet of the pandemic that has seemed eerily familiar to me. Over the past 18 months, we have grieved individually and collectively, and while grief is wildly individual, it is also strangely universal.

Loss of control. Heightened anxiety. Confusion at how people don’t understand how completely the world has changed. Questions without answers. Worrying about how this will affect your children in the short and long term. Anger that their childhood is being affected by this thing at all. Anger in general. Chafing at the new restrictions you are living under. A deep desire that things would just go.back.to.normal. The crushing realization that they never will.

Does any of that sound familiar?

As we are looking at another surge, we are seeing all the “seconds” coming right on the heels of all the “unprecedented” events of 2020. All of the sudden everything seems more permanent and more profound to me, and I don’t think I am alone in that. We are all dealing with an unsettling awareness of the fragility of human life and our lack of control over ourselves, our environment, and other people. As my counselor says, “no one is the best version of themselves right now.”

Beyond that is where we start to see different reactions. I think part of all the conflict and craziness is that people are grieving our collective losses in very different ways. Reminders that everyone grieves differently show up in all the books, podcasts, and blogs related to this topic. Fathers and mothers can grieve very differently, even when they both lost the same child. Some can’t get out of bed, and others have excess nervous energy. Some want to return to work as soon as possible, and others don’t want to return at all. Some need to talk more, and some need to think more. I could make a long list of very different behaviors, all of which would be considered normal for grief, although almost none of them are normal behaviors in and of themselves.

I don’t really know what to do with this realization, but I felt better after having thought about all the craziness in these terms. I am not suggesting public policy should be shaped by emotions or science should be ignored. There may well be correct ways to proceed at this point, and we may need to do things we do not want to do. I think my point is that we are all doing things we don’t want to do. Again. So let’s all just be kind to ourselves, love our neighbors, and know that “many people find the second year is harder than the first.”