October: The Month When Grief Wears a Sweater and Cackles

Every year, as October approaches, my soul resumes its annual tradition of dread.

It’s not the pumpkin spice or the fake cobwebs that haunt me, but the sight of fall jackets emerging from their closet hibernation, like bears roused by distant screams. You know it’s officially autumn when you can hear the breeze rattling through corn husks and children start practicing their best “give me candy or face my toilet paper in your bushes wrath” faces for trick-or-treating.  Despite the seasonal perks, there’s a shadow lurking behind every crunchy leaf for me.

In 2018, Hurricane Michael hit the Gulf Coast.

Little did I know this would be the year mother nature went full drama queen and left my life permanently scorched. As the winds and rain retreated, they took my youngest sister with them. She wasn’t a casualty of flying debris or floodwaters—she was claimed by the sneakier, less newsworthy monster: addiction.

I'm not here to talk about the ravages of addiction; that is for another time. I'm here to talk about the yearly reminder that my world was forever shattered.

I've never been good with dates I'm the worst for whatever reason I've never been able to maintain remembering dates.

The only thing I ever miss about Facebook is that it reminded me of whose birthday was coming up and when what anniversaries were important my brain just doesn't retain numbers that way dates that way but I know the important dates.

I know when my son's birthday is I know when my parents anniversary is these things I know I know when both of my sister's birthdays are but the one that I never questioned myself on is that day in October I got a phone call from my Father that anyone with a family member in the throes of addiction knows that you fear is coming and eventually unfortunately most of the time it will.

My dad has always been a stoic man; he doesn't share his emotions.

He was raised in a military family, my grandfather retired from the Air Force, where nothing showed weaknesses more than feelings.  Men provided, men worked, paid the bills and fathered children.

So as much as I love my dad, I wasn't close with my dad beyond surface level things I didn't talk to my dad about things that worried me or things I was interested in we just didn't have that kind of relationship. He was a safe place, where the nightmares were held at bay.

When my dad called me on that morning, I wasn't prepared, how can anyone ever be prepared to hear about death?

I just assumed my dad was calling to chat like he normally does in the mornings so to hear him broken I think I've heard my dad cry twice in my life, to hear him shattered and so soft spoken was startling. I think I grieved two things that that initial day I grieved my sister, and I grieved the innocence of thinking my dad was invincible.

I digress, this writing is about how I deal with the loss of my sister and I find myself going down the road of other people's actions have affected that day and that's not the case yes it will forever stay with me my dad's reaction but I feel that every day since I lost my sister that has been the reaction of my heart to just crumble and fall apart.

The ramp up in my heart and mind begins starts October 1st.

Constantly worrying about how my nephews are doing, how my parents are doing how my other sister is doing knowing what I really want to hear from them is that there's bad as me that they want to fall apart every minute, but I feel guilty for even saying that.

Is it my own neurosis that is saying to me why are they not grieving hard enough?

We see it on pamphlets we see it in blogs we see it in everything written about grief,

“you cannot tell a person how to grieve”,

“ how long to grieve or how to deal with grief”,

but we do subconsciously we judge how others are grieving at the moment and it's a way we lash out at the loss?

So when October rolls around every year I feel more than just a grief now that we're seven years in there's also an anger because I feel my family is in a stasis and they have been since my sister's death.

My parents are still stuck at Phase 1 and I am desperate to be farther along?

I'm not asking for a ticker tape parade down Main Street for her, just a sign from them that they are struggling like I am.

I am not saying my sister was the best person who ever lived but I feel like there's someone is holding on to my shoulder every time I try and move forward. I'm being pulled back by this hand of grief and it's not my own grief, it just seems to be riding shotgun to my own.

So I'm stuck in this constant hamster wheel every year that when October rolls around I'm feeling it just the same as I did back in 2018.

As this year comes around again to the anniversary I don't feel like I'm at a point where I can move on because I feel like I'm leaving my parents behind if I do.

At what point do I decide to be selfish with my grief?