Surprise, it’s October again. There’s that certain smell in the air. The trees here are already mostly bare. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

October starts with my sister’s birthday and ends with costumes and candy. But the first part always messes with me. It isn’t my nephew’s wedding anniversary that gets to me. It’s death. Death in the middle of the sparkling, crisp, beautiful days of early fall. Why do movies always have it happen in the dark and rain? Real life doesn’t do it that way. It sneaks up on you by surprise. My husband died in the first half of October and every year, no matter how much I wish it to be otherwise I wind up being overly emotional from the first until that day has passed.

I remember coming up on the first anniversary of his death I was asked by a coworker if I had requested that day off. I looked at her blankly, wondering why I would do a thing like that. Several years earlier she had lost her 12 year old son to leukemia that burned through him in a matter of months. I knew how much she still hurt and whenever my boys were at work with me and we saw her I would send them to give her hugs. I knew that she knew about living with loss. She told me that she would take off the day of his death every year because she couldn’t be in the right mindset to focus on work. I thought about it as I struggled through my first time and I know she was right.

I don’t like to be overly emotional. I never understood people who talk about these things in public ways. Even now if I say anything on that day it is usually so subtle that if you don’t know then you would miss it. It is a private thing to me, but I start to wonder if by not expressing it I have allowed it to gain a power over me.

I took my coworkers advice. I made sure to take that day off. It became habit to request the second week of October as a vacation week just so I could handle that aspect of my mental health. A couple of years ago I got up and forced myself to get to work only to find out that I was on vacation. I think I cried in gratitude when the driver who had my schedule that week told me to go home. He remembered my husband and understood.

I don’t have a vacation this year. But I think I’ll be okay without. I don’t work on that day. But I still find myself in an odd mental haze. Time will sometimes run faster than I can keep up with. I’ll get caught in loops of negative thinking. I don’t feel like doing things that should be done or should be fun. I am aware of these things and what they mean and so I fight them. I make lists and choose to do the fun things even if I don’t feel like it. And I’m sharing. It’s still limited. There is a lot that I may never tell another person, but maybe by sharing this much someone else might know they aren’t the only one.

Yeah, October is a weird mix. But as long as I can recognize what my brain throws at me and work through it I’ll be okay. Emotions are not forever. I don’t have to live in the bad. I know I’m not the only one.

Grief and loss and the related depression is a normal part of life. More people deal with it than you might think. Not many speak out about it, but it can be good to remember. Sometimes all it takes to get through it is to acknowledge that today is hard and let someone else tell you that they know what you mean. That kind of support is worth everything.