Dana

I have a shared anniversaries and geometry of grief…I have a line that directly connects my pain to another, Dana. Her life quietly overlapped with mine in the most unfortunate way. We’ve both hit that two-year milestone. Two years ago, my world fractured. And two years ago, a day before DT’s birthday, her husband CB, passed away. It’s an involuntary, deeply unwanted alignment. A cruel anniversary shared by two beautiful women. July, August, and September are my hardest months to get through.

​​The unbearable weight of recognition of pain in seeing her, knowing her story, sends me spiraling into a deep sadness. It's not sadness for her, exactly, but a raw, aching resonance of my own loss. It’s an unbearable weight of recognition.

​Two years out, grief is no longer a tidal wave. It’s more like the new baseline, the atmosphere I breathe. But the moment I see her the floodgates open again. It reminds me of the commonality of our agony, and the fact that—we both watched our husbands lose the fight with their respective illnesses—during the same season. It instantly throws me back to slowing watching my husband’s health deteriorate and the helplessness I felt watching it happen.

​The pain is compounded by the knowledge of the overlaps. CB and DT were both dedicated fathers and lowkey comedians : ), but their deepest connection was the shared ritual of Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Our husbands were massive U of M football fans, and devout, long-suffering Detroit Lions fans. And both teams started winning after our husbands were no longer here to enjoy it.

​​There’s no comfort in knowing someone else is standing in the same empty place, but there is a profound sense of recognition. This is what I see in the eyes of another widow: not pity…but pure, unadorned comprehension and sorrow.

​​As I passed this two-year mark, I sent a silent salute to Dana Banks. I cannot be in her presence yet. I haven’t found the strength to cross that road. It brings me back to the day the coroner removed DT from the house. It hurts that much knowing that someone experienced the same pain that I did. But I send silent prayers to her daily.

We are in the same orbit, not by choice, but by fate. Our loved ones are gone, but the love they left behind is still here.

​Here's to a future that honors the past. Go Blue. Go Lions.