Why I Wear Grey in May

Sometime last fall I was on my way to work and I thought to myself, "Hey-I'm not sad anymore!" That seems kind of random, but I will explain. I've had a pretty uneventful life, relatively devoid of tragedy or out of the ordinary loss. But from January of 2010 until the summer of 2012, I pretty much got hit all at once. It started with my mother-in-laws cancer diagnosis and her passing, then the passing of my grandmother one month later, then the return of my brother Vern's brain cancer and his passing the next April, followed by a few more family losses mixed together with two very stressful years at work. An unshakeable sadness seemed to envelop me. I think the technical term is "situational depression." For some reason, in America, we feel it necessary to recognize what I call "death anniversaries." I really don't know why we do that. It seems to just dredge up that loss and bring back the pain. After the first year's  "anniversaries" of my mother-in-law and then Vern I did two things. The first thing was that I made a conscious decision; no more death anniversaries. Tom and I were watching Joel Osteen on TV and he said an interesting thing. He doesn't visit his dad's grave because that reminds him of the loss and accompanying sadness. He celebrates the happiness and good memories through photos and things like birthdays. That made a lot of sense to me. It wasn't easy letting those days go by unrecognized, but I did it. The second thing I did was to get proactive. I found out that May is Brain Cancer Awareness Month. So for the past two years I have gotten on Facebook and rallied my friends and family to wear grey. Then I paint my toenails grey and keep them that way the whole month. I went online and found out that November is Neoendocrine Cancer Awareness Month (the cancer that took Tom's Mom) and told him that we would be bringing awareness then too. Both types of cancer are rare and aggressive. To me, bringing awareness to these two causes makes me feel like I am doing something good that honors the memory of two people that were very special to me. I know I could wear rainbows every month, but I can't help but feel that once I made the decision to focus on the positive, that feeling of heaviness in my heart that I carried around lifted. And I wasn't sad anymore.