update

 I started thinking about a cycle I have with grief. Last week, I came down with the flu as a result of the shot or a weird coincidence. The flu shot doesn't work for two weeks..I had a really bad headache, fatigue. I forced myself to do most things. 

I think a part of my brain decided, you are too fatigued to handle feeling grief. I felt sad but the familiar pain felt swaddled in cotton; muffled somehow. If I touched it, knocked against it unthinkingly with a memory or a thought, I could sob or tear up. If I avoided the thought, it didn't hurt as much as usual; the daily accompaniment was gone. 

It sounds like I'm constantly in pain. Well, I am. It's not excruciating all the time but it's present all the time. Sometimes, it's in the background, sometimes it helps me feel more...I feel sensitized to the beauty of life, grateful. Sometimes it's all I can do to be semi normal in a day. I reach for normal.

What's helped is letting go of knowing how it's going to be every day.  What's helped is time...in general I have more days of less pain than the months after Andrew passed. 

It sounds grim, doesn't it? It's just how it is. Acceptance does help.