Day 1 — The first month is its own country

Subject: The first month is its own country

Send: 24h after Day 0 (sequenced in Loops).

The first month after they died is the part nobody can describe to you, because the people who lived through it are not the same people they were when it started, and they don't quite remember.

Time stops working the way it used to. The clock moves but the day doesn't. You'll find yourself standing in front of an open refrigerator for what feels like a minute and then realize it's been ten. You'll drive somewhere and not remember the drive. You'll wake up at three in the morning convinced you have to do something, and you won't be able to say what.

You'll forget. For half a second, then a whole second, then sometimes a minute, you'll forget, and you'll go to tell them something, and the forgetting will end. That is normal. That is the brain doing what brains do. It is not a betrayal. It is not progress. It is your nervous system catching up with something it cannot quite hold.

People will say "let me know if you need anything." You will not know how to answer them. That is also normal. You don't yet know what you need. You may not for months. The people who love you mean those words; they don't know they're a question with no answer.

The first month is its own country. The rules of the country are: you don't have to be brave. You don't have to be functional. You don't have to write thank-you notes for the casseroles. You don't have to attend things. You don't have to make decisions you can wait on. (Most of them are decisions you can wait on, more than people will tell you.) The country has bad weather and the weather changes hourly. You are not in charge of the weather.

What I wish someone had said to my mother in those weeks: this is not how it stays. Not because it gets easier on a schedule — it doesn't, and anyone who tells you it will be done in six months or a year is lying or selling something — but because the country you're in right now has a particular geography, and you will not be in it forever. The grief stays. The country changes.

For today, the only thing: drink water. Eat what you can. Sleep when sleep comes. The rest will wait.

— Margaret

What's one thing this week you wished someone had warned you about?