Anniversaries that mark the day our loved one’s passed away can be tough days.

You think about it weeks leading up to it and dread the day.

Your body seems to remember even before your mind.

Athletes call this muscle memory.

Muscle memory can best be described as a type of movement with which the muscles become familiar over time. For instance, newborns don’t have muscle memory for activities like crawling, scooting or walking. The only way for the muscles to become accustomed to these activities is for the baby to learn how to do these things and then practice them with a great deal of trial and error..

I think there’s a grief memory as well.

Our bodies store everything that’s ever happened to us, and something as profound as grief cycles though our minds, bodies and spirits. We find ourselves a year later experiencing many of the same overwhelming emotions as if no time has passed at all. Unless we teach our spirits literally replace the painful memories with new memories, we can circle this mountain again and again.

A dear friend of mine has a very difficult few weeks leading up to the anniversary of her father’s passing. He committed suicide and also killed his wife, her step-mother. It was needless to say, a horrendous shock and tragedy. We were talking this morning and she was weepy, feeling lost, and I reminded her that this weekend was the anniversary of my mother’s passing. Then it hit her–her father’s passing date will be in a few days. Her body remembered long before she looked at a calendar.

But knowing that this happens helps. Each year, each cycle, we can choose a path of healing–in some small way we can begin to remember with sweetness and peace instead of turmoil and panic.

This year, I spent the day I remember my mother’s passing quite differently than before.

I danced this day.

Why?

We celebrated two family weddings this past weekend–one on Friday, another on Saturday (different sides of the family). I spent all weekend at rehearsal dinners, on the beach, toasting with champagne, hugs, hugs, and more hugs. Both sides of the family are generous, sweet, affectionate people, and both sides had lost a dear loved one this year so they knew how precious a day of celebration was.

It was also the right time for me. Enough time has passed that this was the right thing to do. There is a time to mourn, to ache, but there is a time to rebuild our lives.

It’s important to celebrate every chance we get.

Life is hard enough. Death comes and taps each of us on the shoulder.

Everyone’s been touched by cancer, heart disease, car accidents, Alzheimer’s–do you know anyone who has not experienced at least one or more of these?

Life also comes in packages–life-death, babies old age. We cannot open our arms to one and reject the other. We must somehow, learn to embrace both.

If this is the first or second year after your loved one’s passing, it is most likely a very difficult day. Be easy on yourself. Do whatever you need to do, whatever way you can get by. For some, this is a day to visit a graveside for others, it’s a day to go parasailing–to do something so big and over the top to remind themselves they are alive and outrunning death’s grip. Some can barely get out of bed.

Be where you are. Do what feels right and natural. But know it won’t always be like this.

I was on a boat with a friend once. We were facing the wind, our hair going wild. We were smiling and laughing and watching flocks of birds lift out of the marsh and take off in flight, the spray of water surprising us–and my friend said,

“If sorrows and tragedies can literally make us age, then can’t good times, celebrations make us younger?”

Yes, it can.

Scientists and physicians including Dr. Michael Roizen, author of Real Age has proven this.

You can be younger than your chronological age by how you take care of yourself physically, and by your mental outlook on life.

I missed my mom this year.

Thinking about the day she left this world will no doubt always hurt, but as I danced with my husband, my nieces and nephews, my mother-in-law, babies and toddlers, as I hugged and kissed and cried and toasted I knew that this was the very, very best way I could honor my mother’s life–and her passing.

To dance.

It was time to place a new memory on top of the old one. It doesn’t diminish it.

Perhaps this is why people started placing flowers on graves.

Life and rebirth trumps death every time.

~Carol D. O’Dell

Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir

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