What We Mean When We Talk About Grief

I am one of those people who keeps a paper calendar on the wall near my desk. I’m not so old school that I don’t also keep electronic reminders of upcoming meetings and important dates, but I have never quite been able to kick the habit of having an actual calendar I can write on and look at as well. I just turn my head from my desk and it is to my right, hanging from a small nail in the wall. There is nothing like writing down a date to imprint it in my overloaded brain and I always look forward to flipping to a new month on the first and the feeling of a fresh start. This year, there was a tear in the hole of the page for July. The new month kept flipping down back to June, so I just left it there. All month from my desk, I glanced over at the daisies of June instead of the bluebonnets of July. It was for the best. I could have taped it closed so July could have faced me but I couldn’t face it.

It is a rough month for me, I guess you have gathered.

“It” totally makes sense as a Stephen King monster. Referring to a date as “it” kind of tells you everything how inching up to July 31 feels to me. Starting the last week of June, I begin bracing for it. Objectively, the “it” of July is less scary than a sewer-dwelling clown who’s out for blood but, as opposed to what King conjured, my it is real and I am at the whims of its dark turns nonetheless.