I thought I would reflect again on my grief process. It has now been just over two years since my husband was first diagnosed and hospitalized with COVID, and about 21 months since I held his hand as he died.

In some ways, year two is harder than year one. I think I was in such a state of automatic pilot that first year; just trying to keep functioning and having to deal with so much legal rigmarole that is part and parcel of closing a person's affairs after their death was time consuming and rather all-encompassing. But the legal matters are complete. Covid is by and large off of most people's radar -- the state of emergency is about to be deemed over. People want to move on and forget the pandemic happened.

But that is something I will never be able to do. The pandemic changed my life completely. People want to forget. In a weird way, to me, that feels like they are saying my husband's death should be forgotten (rational or not, that's how it feels and I know I am not alone in that reaction).

Crazy people actually say things like, "Covid never happened;" "Covid was a hoax." That kind of insanity and conspiracy thinking has always been maddening. Sure, I should blow it off. Lord knows I try. But that kind of thinking -- those kinds of comments -- attack my experience at its core. Yes, Covid grief is incredibly difficult.

So in this current state of "let's get past it and forget about it," I think my latest stage of grief is of feeling very much invalidated by the general denial, abandoned by the general public and the government who want to forget COVID happened and move on, and alone in a grief for the death of my dear husband because most people truly don't want to "see" the 1.1 million lives lost right here in the United States -- they look away because the reality is too real and too large to even acknowledge.

This stage in my grief will move into another stage -- thus it is with grief. I will never "get over it" or even "past it" -- that's a misunderstanding about grief. I will just move differently into this different life into which I've been thrown.

Mostly I'm okay. I've never ended up depressed. The bouts of PTSD (very, very common for families who have lost people to COVID) have been pretty manageable. I've continued to work. I've returned to my activities. I'm figuring things out.

But losing a spouse is kind of like losing a limb I guess(?). I can learn to function without my husband, -- I'm sure quite well for the most part -- but I will never be quite the same person or feel completely whole. I will still have that pain that reminds me of what once was . . . .