Last week was the six-month "anniversary." My sister's friend called me that night and we played catch-up, but didn't really talk too much about it. It's not something you can explain to people who haven't been there -- you mark dates kind of emotionally. You don't even really think about it, or want to deliberately acknowledge it, but it's just something you wake up aware of. "Oh, today is the day when..." It's just always in the back of your mind. And I know everyone thinks, six months, get over it by now you big dumb cow. People think it's just about loss or grief and that time will heal you. But when there's guilt and things you didn't do/say, when there's the indelible picture of their last terrified, painful breath, you don't really get over it. You obsess about the time you can't change. Time becomes this strange enemy friend... it goes faster than ever for you, letting you move past the event, but slower than ever, so that you can't sleep, eat, breathe without thinking of all the wrong things. Everything is date-stamped.

I'm at 15 months & some days (I stopped counting the days early this year) & am not yet "over it." I'm not expecting to be, in the sense of "getting back to normal" (like I was ever at normal anyway *g*). You don't go back, you go forward, & you become someone else, & it might be someone the people who want you to get over it aren't going to like, because your priorities change. Why shouldn't they? You've changed.

I write this down occasionally: Grief is a mirror that lies. It shows you all the perfectly normal things you did, every bad moment, every time you yelled instead of being patient, every time you wished she was gone so you could be alone for a few minutes, everything, & instead of showing you a person living a normal life, it shows you a monster. I console myself with knowing if I had been kinder to Pat, she would have felt bad, because she always thought she wasn't nice enough to me.

And I'm in the process of answering your email, but I'm slow. *g*