September is kicking my butt, and we’re only 4 days in.

It’s so bad that I’ve switched to drinking chamomile and decaf orange pekoe tea, so as not to pour gasoline (caffeine) on the fire (anxiety).

In September 2017, my life partner Brock got a septic infection that almost killed him, and then I held his hand as he died from his advanced kidney cancer. Last September I co-planned a memorial service, went to that service with our four-year-old son, and then starting packing up our apartment the next day so we could move across the province.

This September I will finally unpack those boxes and re-discover all the mementos from our 11.5 years together. I will arrange them in a beautiful, new house that I built using Brock’s life insurance money.

This month, Isaac and I will wake up in our new home and start our new life without Brock. For the first time in four years, we will have a life we can settle into. We will plan long-term and use the future tense: we haven’t done that since Brock got sick in October 2014.

I’ve read a lot about grief and attended the support groups. I know that anniversaries and significant dates can knock the wind out of a person.

My own birthday in April was surprisingly hard.

But this is ridiculous. I cry at the playground, my brain can’t keep track of all the things I’m supposed to get done each day, and my body is telling me to run away, to fly to Vancouver and help Q and Taylor unpack into their new love shack, or to lock myself into a room and go to sleep. My monkey brain longs for flight, but I have too many responsibilities this month to do what it wants.

Isaac starts kindergarten tomorrow. It’s his birthday this month, and he’s now old enough to notice if I skip the party.

I need to finish tiling the back-splashes in our new house. I’m supposed to learn how to grout and caulk and seal.

And then there will be the big clean up, and then moving all our stuff from the storage locker into our home. Opening up all those memories.

Brock was always good at figuring out where to put the furniture. I don’t know where to put the furniture.

Survival Strategy

1. Auto-pilot through the to-dos.
2. Ask for help and delegate when I can.
3. Lean on friends when I need to be sad.
4. Give myself fun times and distractions and try to enjoy the little moments.
5. Take care of myself: have mini dance parties and book a massage.

Here we go.

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