I try to pretend that July is not a cold, heartless bitch. The first 39 of my Julys lured me into thinking that it was the best month ever. 31 days completely full of family, friends, and fun. The month of the year that is the most laid-back and relaxed, designed with the sole purpose of making the best memories. I had a false sense of July being a tragedy-free month. Nothing bad could happen during such fabulous perfection. I mean, it is the National Month of Kristiemas. Everyone knows that.

2017 did not disappoint on the “July-can-actually-be-a-VERY-tragic-month” spectrum. July 1 we received the horrific news that 4 very good, very undeserving-of-tragedy, people were killed in a cabin fire. Friends of ours, with their young children, gone. We were left feeling helpless and incompetent. Having suffered through our own ordeal, we should know the answers. We should know what to say and know what to do. I was ready to jump in and help, with no idea how to do it. I feel tremendous loss, even though it is not a personal, my-life-will-never-be-the-same, loss. I know to some degree how those left behind feel and how that type of shock is impossible to ever completely heal from. I can hardly bear the thought of someone else feeling how I felt those first weeks and months. 

From a selfish, this-is-all-about-me, place, I need July to start off calmly. This news, followed by funerals of the saddest kind, sent me in a downward spiral that made it difficult to cope. I need to slowly ease into the terrible anniversary season. I can’t jump in the ice-cold awfulness head-first. I can mentally tick off the terrible dates. July 2 is when my father-in-law died. July 5 was when Mike and Drew got back from Boy Scouts. The middle of the month was always spent shopping for the best deals, precooking the food, getting it all Foodsavered to save space in the cooler. It was a crazy time of boring tasks that we somehow turned into a grand adventure. July 20 is the day we left for camping 4 years ago. July 23 is the day Mike and I spent together, driving back to Emmett to deliver a load of wood. Any other year, I would struggle to remember that, but 7/23/13 is permanently etched into my bank of bittersweet memories. The last time we would ever take a drive together, the last time Mike would be at our house, the last time we picked anything from our garden. July 25 was my last great birthday with Mike. The last time I would wake up to him singing me “Happy Birthday.” The last time of him making a huge, giant deal of my birthday. The last time he would sneak money away to buy me a gift because we were on a “spending freeze.” July 26 begins the nightmare with the broken leg and PTSD-inducing events that followed. July 27 was the surgery that felt so common-place but went so very wrong. July 28 was the day the stroke was discovered, the day we made decisions NO ONE should ever have to make, and the day we said good-bye FOREVER to our love, our husband, son, dad, brother, and literally the greatest person most of us will ever meet. It was the last time I would ever wake up without feeling sick to my stomach from missing him so bad. July 29 is the official date listed on the death certificate and it would seem, the worst day imaginable. If only all the other days leading up to it weren’t so sucky. August is pretty bland in comparison, with the only suck days being our wedding anniversary, the funeral anniversary, and Mike’s birthday. Those are hard, but my emotions are already pretty shot, so somehow they are easier to deal with. I can suffer right through them, with minimal trauma. But, July. That’s another story.

I’ve put a lot of thought into minimizing the July suffering. Skipping our annual camping trip seems to be obvious. There’s no way I can do it. There is no way that I can miss out on all those happy memories and fun times spent with our family and friends. Every year, I am tempted to skip it. To find something else to do during this week. Then, every year, I am reminded of how lucky I am to be surrounded by such great people. Every year, I am pleasantly surprised that there is no where else I feel this close to Mike. Every year, we do something fun and cool to honor him on July 29 and every year it feels like we’re doing exactly what we should be doing. I have yet to find the answer to minimizing the pain. Sometimes I get furious that it’s still this agonizing. I think I should be healing a little faster or “getting over it” a little bit easier. Those are the times I have to work extra super hard at being kind to myself and remember that “where there is great grief, there was great love.” Thank you, grief, for ruining my favorite month.