Calendars, grief, and the ✨mess✨ we're living

Holding tension between incongruent things

[Briefly, a content warning that this touches on topics of grief, pregnancy loss, and infertility]

Today is both Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day. It’s a peculiar tension to hold today—celebrating love while also being reminded of our death.

I’ve read a number of thoughtful Christian reflections on this, and even one newsletter in my inbox that began by calling this the most peculiar crossover outside of the Marvel Universe. It was certainly a bold sentiment.

But bear with me—this isn’t going to get theological.

Some context

If you’re not a Christian or you aren’t in a church tradition that follows a liturgical calendar, then you may not remember that we also saw these observances overlap in 2018. We will see this “crossover event” again in 2029, if I remember correctly, and then not again until the next century.

I find the Church calendar interesting and inviting. I appreciate the the cyclical set up as much as the thoughtful way we are brought in as a community to engage in rhythms that recall the seasonality of our very existence.

On calendars

Even so, I find calendars frustrating despite their utility. Yes, we use them to help us establish and follow rhythms that may or may not align with the seasons. To help us remember birthdays and anniversaries. We make plans with our friends, schedule birthday parties, and plot the days until our next vacation.

But we women quietly track our menstrual cycles, too—and those of us struggling with infertility and pregnancy loss track a whole host of other things, as well. Bodily signs and symptoms existing on paper or in an app, but no tangible way to track our grief.

I remember my father using a calendar of sorts to track how often he had seizures and when he took his medication. I would watch him with quiet wonder as he made check marks or dashes to indicate his action. I asked too many questions, but no amount of answers helped me fully grasp his frustration or his grief.

On overlapping observances & anniversaries

And when seemingly disconnected days overlap on our calendars, it gives me pause. Anxiety flickers in my brain, drawing out the slightest hypervigilance.

My father passed away on Mother’s Day. At one point in my early 20s—when the grief was still so acute—the date was also my then-boyfriend’s birthday. Truly an unfortunate overlap.

A few years ago, I began a miscarriage the day before my father’s birthday. On his birthday, I was still bleeding. An unexpected, unfortunate invitation to grieve doubly in this overlap, too.

I coped by imagining my father in some heavenly place, tending to the children I’ve lost, getting to be the grandfather I desperately wish my earthside kids could know. It feels like I’m getting punched in the chest to evoke a laugh.

(And all of this makes Mother’s Day even more fraught.)

On the present moment

It would feel dishonest not to admit that I’m struggling with the incongruence of reflecting on the children who could have been here while having a challenging day with the ones who are.

It’s 8 am as I write this, and we’re wading out of a couple of really hard hours. We woke up in the dark. There have been tears… and pancakes… and sad songs… and a lot of Pete the Cat.  But my daughter is sitting next to me now, giggling as she imagines something silly and playful.

Eventually, I’ll be invited into the scenario, and we’ll laugh together and continue with our day.

We’ll exist in more tension. In more joy and grief, in tears and laughter, in death and life. We’ll hold it all with open hands—each day presented as an offering to the God of unpredictability, of love and loss, of sickness and health, of this broken, mess of a life we eke out stubbornly, day after day.