Summer time for us was two months in France in a little studio nothing fancy but we had everything in just being together. I lost my husband in June 2021, diagnosed with AML in December, Michael was 57 we were married for 37yrs together for 40 years, I am 61. In time you may even find that the very "grief triggers" that once caused you sadness now fill you with a sense of love and remembrance. But inversely, if we let them, such reminders may also fill us with warmth and comfort. True, when someone we love dies, we are always at risk of their memory triggering aftershocks of the pain. Memories are where our loved ones continue to live after they're gone this is why we hold onto objects that remind us of them and go to places where they feel near. You see, it happens often enough that a song, a place, or a face reminds me of something wonderful about my mother - enough so that I would endure any amount of pain to remember the good. Still, I fight the urge to avoid reminders because, although they seem like the enemy during times of darkness, my involuntary memories are usually the exact opposite. Under a dense fog of emotional malaise in the thick of fall, it is always tricky for me to maintain perspective. Some grievers will respond by eliminating and avoiding reminders such as objects, people and places others will try and battle their way through, growing less and less embarrassed by each public outburst of emotion. ![]() You might fear being blindsided by reminders of your loved one, their death, and their absence, especially right after a loss when your emotions are raw and labile. These memories that are often associated with strong emotion interrupt your brain's regular programming, and the intrusion may be happy-happy-joy-joy, or it may make you feel like you've been hit in the gut.įor those who've recently lost a loved one, knowing these triggers are out there can cause a fair amount of anxiety. To clarify, these memories aren't entirely random and don't actually come out of nowhere usually, a sight, sound, song, smell, word, or another memory triggers them. Many of these memories are innocuous, while others, especially those associated with deceased loved ones, can leave you with a veritable range of feelings. ![]() They might hit you out of nowhere as you're driving down the street, sitting at your desk at work, or while you're microwaving popcorn. These are the memories that pop into your head without any effort on your part to recall them. Grief triggers are troubling because they open the floodgate for involuntary autobiographical memories. ![]() A grief trigger might tie to a specific memory or emotion, or it may be something that flashes into consciousness and merely leaves you with a sense of sadness and yearning. Triggers may be obvious and easy to anticipate – like a birthday or a holiday – or they may be surprising – like spotting someone who looks like your loved one in a crowd. A grief trigger is anything that brings up memories related to a loss. I couldn’t find an actual definition for ‘grief trigger’ so I’m going to go ahead and define it for you. With its sensory overload, fall is a landmine of grief triggers. In the scrapbook of my mind, memories of hayrides, Halloween, and apple picking play second string to goodbyes, red-eyed family members, graveyards, sadness, and longing. First days of school, homecoming, pumpkin carving, leaf pile jumping – if these were the only things that had ever happened in fall, my memories from September thru November would be picturesque yet typical.īut my mother died in the fall, on a crisp October New York morning, and now it seems I will never experience the sights, smells, and feelings of fall in quite the same way. In my 33 years, I have amassed quite a few fall-related memories.
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