The Second Year, And Why It Can Be Harder

The first anniversary is treated as a milestone, with an implication that the worst has been survived. A substantial number of people find the following year harder.

Shock is a form of insulation

Early grief often comes with a sense of unreality that dulls the edges. People describe watching themselves function, or expecting the person to come back through the door.

That state is protective, and it wears off gradually rather than at a defined point. What replaces it is a clear-eyed understanding of the permanence of the loss.

Clarity is harder than numbness. The second year is frequently when the absence stops being an event and starts being the ordinary condition of life.

Support has already receded

Sympathy is intense and short. Visits, messages and offers of help concentrate around the funeral and thin steadily over the following months.

By the second year most people around the mourner have returned to their own lives, and asking how things are going has stopped being a routine question.

The mourner also tends to stop mentioning it, sensing that others have moved on, which removes the last regular occasion for the loss to be spoken about.

The firsts are over and the sameness begins

The first birthday, first holiday and first anniversary are anticipated and often planned for. The second time around, nobody marks them and no one expects them to be difficult.

What remains is repetition without novelty, which is where the long shape of the loss becomes apparent. There is no longer a milestone to aim at.

People frequently interpret this as going backwards, when it is a normal part of the sequence rather than a relapse.

Practical matters resurface

Decisions deferred during the first year tend to fall due in the second: what to do with a house, whether to move, what to do with belongings still untouched.

Each of these reopens the loss deliberately, and they arrive at the point when the emotional reserves built up early on have largely been spent.

What tends to help

Continuing to talk about the person, keeping some routine that involves other people, and not treating the calendar as a schedule for recovery all appear repeatedly in accounts of this period.

Where difficulty is persistent and disabling, a family doctor or a bereavement service is the appropriate place to take it. Grief that lasts is not evidence of doing it wrongly.