The Second Year

I've had a week or so of really missing Sam. Not constant melancholy or anything like that, but strong feelings of loss.

It started with the usual stuff - last Saturday we watched the broadcast of the Foo Fighters gig, which brought back those feelings of 'wish you'd been there'. Then on Sunday night we went over to my brother-in-law James' house to watch the DVD of the Green Day tour that he and Sam went to, just before Sam died.

Even though the DVD was shot in Tokyo, it still gave me a really good sense of what it must have been like, and I know that Sam would have loved it. It was his first major concert, one of his favourite bands, and it was a pretty awesome show from what I can see: lots of great songs, a real presence on stage, fire and special effects, sing alongs - everything you want from a good concert experience.
 As I said a while back, his main reaction was 'it was good, yeah', but I know it was a lot more exciting to him than he made out. Despite getting home from Sydney quite late, he still went to school the next day to tell everyone about it!
The concert DVD ended with 'Time of Your Life', which as you know was played while Sam's coffin was lowered at his funeral. So it was a bit of a sad moment for all of us.

Despite a busy week, there have been lots of little moments when Samuel was right at the front of my mind. I'm also seeing lots of comments from his friends about learning how to drive, which starts that ache again. I hate all these reminders that Sam won't get to do those things. Not that I begrudge his friends, it just hurts.

Then, on Saturday night, we watched the movie 'Tangled', which (of all things) set me off. As you probably know, it's an animated Disney movie about Rapunzel, so not they type you'd usually associate with grief. But there's a scene towards the end where the town sends a big bunch of lanterns up into the sky, an annual thing that marks the birthday of the lost princess (i.e. Rapunzel). For some reason, all I could think of was Sam, and the tears just flowed.

I've mentioned before that I've found this second year harder than the first. That's not to say that I am spiraling into misery or anything like that - I'm definitely in the 'testing - acceptance' stages of grief - but I am experiencing many more of the feelings now, that I expected, but didn't feel in the early days.

My best friend Sally and I were talking about it yesterday, and we decided that during the first year, we were so busy getting used to things, and going through 'firsts': the first Christmas, first birthday, first Mother's Day etc; that we didn't have time to think of the permanence of this. Not as much as we do now, anyway.

It is permanent. I'll never see him again. That's hard.

Don't worry about me; there are plenty of things to make me happy, and to keep me going. But it's important that I still document these things. Because I do miss him. So much.