Lynn,

You need to be more patient with yourself.

A friend proffered this when she lost her mom from cancer - one has to go
through a year, the first of each holiday, the first set of birthdays and
anniversaries without the loved one for it to stop feeling quite so fresh.
That first Thanksgiving, the first time you would have done something
particular with your loved one, the first time through all the reminders.
After the first time, it isn't quite so hard. That means a full year

Being Jewish, I am partial to our own mourning rituals where grief is a
process, not an event. One isn't considered a mourner until the person is
buried; grief just doesn't set in until there is nothing 'left' to be done
for the deceased. Then for the first week, people expect you to be unable to
do anything for yourself. The community brings you food and visits at your
house daily, and includes a special prayer the family says acknowledging God
and His(Her?) power and strength. In the prayer, there are places where the
community responds to specific lines and the prayer can only be said if
there is a quorum of at least 10 Jews. One needs the community support when
there is a death. After a week, you can go back to work, but there are other
things you don't do for 30 days (cut your hair, shave beards, go to parties
where there is dancing). Then, for a parent or child, you are considered a
mourner and continue to say that prayer at every synagogue service until
eleven months have passed since the loss. It is assumed you will still need
community 'support' through the responsive prayer, and having people come up
to you after services to chat about how your life is going for all those 11
months. It takes a long time to heal from loss and Judaism confirms and
supports that. Traditions that say, bury your dead and get on with your life
just don't take into account the fact that you need to process all the hurt
and loss.

And then we still get those moments during lifecycle events. We have lost
both my parents to cancer and my husband's father to dementia. Last spring
was our oldest child's graduation from high school; filled with all sorts of
bittersweet moments like Prom and all the graduation activities. It was
incredibly sad that three of the four grandparents had passed and the fourth
lives 400 miles away and wasn't healthy enough to travel at the time. It was
odd and empty to not share the milestone with more than one generation.

So Lynn, stop saying "you should be feeling this or doing that." There just
aren't any 'shoulds.' All there is, is the reality of what you feel at any
given moment.

Adelle